E is for Enemy
by shaolingrrl
Summary: Written for the 2007 Summer Alphabet Challenge
1. Chapter 1

This one is kinda scary for me because I much prefer to have the whole thing done before I post. But I'm not quite sure where I'm going to take this, and I want to get out of my comfort zone. 

Either that or I've been drawn to the dark side.

I promise I will finish it, though.

Anyway, spoilers for Brutus and The Janus List, neither of which I own, just like I don't own the rest of the show.

**E is for Enemy**

Raymond, the CIA agent, was the last to enter the conference room. The prisoner stopped listening to all the chatter about exotic poisons and focused microwave beams and accidentally-on-purpose arranging for a Chinese agent to be at the right place at the right time and slumped lower in his seat.

He could scarcely remember a time before this nightmare he was trapped in; he'd had a home, a life, position, reputation, respect, the courage of his convictions--none of which seemed real anymore. He'd had an older brother, too, and while trying to make his older brother's death right he'd been caught and handed off to Agent Raymond. Agent Raymond, in turn, had delivered him to the constant pain and humiliation that was now his reality, that he thought must have been going on for years, for an eternity.

But if that was the case, Raymond should look older, worn down. Used up. Yet somehow the agent looked exactly the same: tall, slender, brown hair cut short, blue eyes and fair skin. Even a dimple in his chin. The All-American Boy, grown up and handed a gun, given a license to ruin lives.

The prisoner suddenly realized he may not have been in Hell for very long. After all, one of the first things they took away from someone in his position was a sense of time passing. Knowledge of the outside world. An identity. No real surprise that years' worth of torture had taken place in only a few months.

Besides, when Raymond handed him over, the agent probably got a commendation and an extra week's vacation. No wonder he looked so chipper.

The prisoner sighed. Understanding what was being done to him and why had never helped him cope as much as he'd hoped, but he tried to be philosophical about it.

Agent Raymond paused behind the one empty seat at the conference table, mumbling apologies as he scanned the faces of the other attendees. The prisoner sank down even farther, but it was impossible to hide; when Raymond's eyes settled on the one orange prison jumpsuit in a sea of grays and blacks and navy blues, he raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Well, if it isn't Dr. Dry-"

Pain stabbed behind the prisoner's eyes, and he gasped. "Please."

"What's wrong?"

"That's not who he is anymore," said the man at the head of the table. Deputy Director Curtis.

Agent Raymond's head jerked slightly. "Then what do I call him? Marcus?"

"We haven't decided yet, Agent." Perhaps the Deputy Director part was a title, like "Agent"; the prisoner wasn't so clear on the concept of identifiers anymore, but there were other people at the table who answered to "Deputy Director," so he was inclined to go with the title hypothesis. He did know it wasn't fair that all these men and women seated around the table had names of their own when he had nothing.

"Please, sit down, Agent Raymond."

Raymond nodded. One last glance across the table, and he sat and clasped his hands in front of him, looking quietly attentive.

"Have you been briefed about why we called you in?"

Agent Raymond scanned the faces around the table and nodded. He cleared his throat. "I understand we have a bit of a situation--"

"Problem, Agent, problem," said Curtis. "I hate these damned euphemisms. How can you deal with something if you can't even call it what it is?"

Agent Raymond blushed.

Curtis waved off his embarrassment. "We have a small problem, and I very much intend to keep it from getting any bigger. We've been discussing several options for taking care of this problem, one of which involves our friend here." He nodded toward the prisoner, who sat very still.

Discomfort forgotten, Raymond studied him. "You're already making progress," he said, excitement coloring his words. "See what you can do when you have the resources?"

The prisoner looked away.

Curtis chuckled. "And through an amazing coincidence, the FBI team that introduced us to our friend is also intimately involved with our little problem." He nodded to a woman even younger than Raymond, whose fingers danced over the keys of a laptop computer. Three FBI identification photos appeared on the screen behind Curtis. The prisoner straightened in his chair. He recognized them all--the pretty woman with long brown hair, the genial-looking black man, the dark-haired man with piercing dark eyes. He frowned. Where was the younger man with sandy-brown hair?

We have a small problem.

Oh. Exotic poisons, focused microwave beams, and Chinese agents were starting to make more sense.

"Given what you know of our friend's methods, which of these three would you recommend he work with?"

Apparently Agent Raymond was a little brighter than he seemed. Or perhaps he'd heard the rumors. Either way, he didn't mention the missing FBI agent. "May I ask--"

"No, you may not."

"I'll need to know."

The prisoner cringed, as shocked as everyone else that he'd spoken. Permission, you need permission to speak-- He tried to cover his mouth as though to deny his words, but his wrist shackles were attached to a hook under the table and the chain snapped taut with his hands at the level of his throat.

No one hit him or sprayed ice water in his face or shocked him. The black hood did not come down. Curtis merely raised an eyebrow. "We don't have time to go into the whole mess right now. You'll be briefed later."

The prisoner stared, while his hands slowly closed into fists.

"Very well." Curtis sighed. "A betrayal. That's all I'll tell you at this point."

The prisoner let his hands fall to his lap and turned to Raymond. "I need anger." His voice felt rusty, unused. He quelled the impulse to clear his throat. "Does that help you?"

Raymond blinked. "I would think--" He looked back to the screen, rubbed at his jaw. "The team leader, I would think."

"He is angry? He has outbursts?"

Raymond rubbed his jaw again and smiled. "Oh, yes."

"Are you sure?" A new voice; everyone turned to look at the speaker. Yet another Deputy Director in an expensive suit--dark blue, this time. Tompkins? He frowned at Raymond, at Curtis, at the prisoner. "Are you sure none of the others are suitable? What about the partner?"

"What's wrong, Bob?"

Tompkins shook his head. "I believe the lead agent is the older brother of one of my best consultants. I'd rather not upset him."

"We all have to make sacrifices, Bob."

"Unnecessary sacrifices get us nothing," Tompkins snapped, and the prisoner watched, wide-eyed. To think that this Tompkins could disagree... Defiance hadn't been possible for the prisoner for years.

He looked at Raymond again. No. Only a few months.

An idea began to take shape.

Curtis grimaced. Then, with a slight shrug, he turned back to Agent Raymond. "You heard the man. What about the other two?"

Raymond shook his head slowly. "The woman, Reeves, was upset with our goals, but merely verbalized her displeasure. I didn't interact with Sinclair enough to form an opinion."

"I've seen his file," said Curtis. "He went through a lot of conflict avoidance training when he was younger. No reports of outbursts. While Eppes--" he cast an apologetic look at Tompkins-- "apparently does have a temper. He's also in therapy."

"Therapy?" The prisoner tried to clamp down on the giddy feeling talking freely gave him. "I'll need the notes."

Curtis nodded. "Can you do it?" he asked, ignoring Tompkins' sigh.

The prisoner stared at him, unnerved. Curtis was asking his considered opinion. As though he mattered. Curtis wasn't screaming at him, or hitting him, or belittling the size of his manhood. The prisoner shrank into himself a little, looking from side to side. This must be a trap. He'd say the wrong thing, get dragged from the room--

"Can you do it?"

The prisoner was jarred into a response. "Do you want the full protocol?"

"Of course I want the full protocol. Any solution we find to this problem needs to police itself."

The prisoner stared at the photo of the dark-haired man. He remembered talking to him. Agent--Eppes?--had made no secret of his disdain for the prisoner's actions, but neither had he abused him. The prisoner glanced at Deputy Director Tompkins. Agent Eppes had a younger brother, too. The idea in the prisoner's mind took shape, took form. "I'll need him for a week, twenty-four hours a day."

"You get him for two weeks, nights only."

"Nights only? I can't control what input he gets--"

"Plus he must appear to function at work."

The prisoner pretended to consider, but really, it was the only chance he had. He shrugged, and his shackles clinked together. "It'll help with the sleep deprivation," he said. "The dextroamphetamines will keep him going during the daytime ."

"Just like old times." Raymond grinned.

"Still, the question of counterproductive influences during daytime remains."

Curtis smiled. "Are you familiar with the Stanford Persuasive Technologies Lab?"

The prisoner smiled back. The smile felt dangerous, but a good dangerous. After far too long, a dangerous he could use. "I'd intended to incorporate some of their tech into my conditioning regimen, but the men I was working with were hardly Internet-savvy."

Curtis eyed him. The prisoner returned his gaze for a moment, before realizing that perhaps Deputy Director Curtis would wonder at feeling so much kinship for a beaten, broken man. Unless he was not actually beaten and broken--

The prisoner dropped his eyes, drew his shoulders up around his ears. He heard Curtis grunt. "Bob, I'll need some of your people."

"Why?"

"You've got the best hackers. We'll get you access to Eppes' cell phone and work machine and some code samples to work off of, and your hackers can do the rest."

Tompkins remained silent and the prisoner glanced at him. His jaw was set, his mouth twisted in a grimace of distaste.

"Come on, Bob, I could be doing you a favor. Maybe this consultant of yours is the type who works through his grief."

"Shut up."

Curtis straightened and regarded Tompkins coolly. "Deputy Director Tompkins, are you intending to obstruct an operation undertaken in the name of national security?"

"No, god dammit! You can have what you want. Just--shut up." Tompkins shoved himself away from the desk and strode from the room. If not for the pneumatic hinges, the door would have slammed behind him.

"Iago." The prisoner whispered, but even a whisper was loud in the silence left behind by Tompkins' exit.

"What?" asked Agent Raymond.

"Call me Iago."

The silence resumed for one heartbeat--two--

Curtis leaned back in his chair and laughed. "Excellent," he finally said, still chuckling. "Iago it is."

"Excuse me, sir?" No, Raymond really was stupid.

"What are they calling an education these days? Disgraceful," muttered Curtis. "Othello, Agent. It's a reference to Othello."

"Isn't that about some jealous husband killing his wife?"

Really, the prisoner almost felt sorry for Raymond.

"No, Agent. It's about betrayal." Curtis looked at the prisoner--Iago, he reminded himself. I have a name now. Iago. "Betrayal, both real and imagined."

As Iago studied Curtis, he rolled his new name around his mouth, tasting it. Names had meaning. Names had power. He hadn't realized how important they were until his own was taken away.

Iago decided he liked his new name. He liked it very much.


	2. Chapter 2

Here we go. Seat of the pants time.

Note: In Chapter 1 I messed up. Tompkins is an Assistant Director, not a Deputy Director. From here on out it'll be fixed, and Curtis will also be an Assistant Director.

All disclaimers still in place.

**E is for Enemy, Part 2**

Don Eppes grabbed for his cell phone, already knowing who was calling before he looked at the display. In the week since Colby's arrest, Charlie had taken to phoning Don each day just before lunch. According to Charlie, calling at that particular time maximized the probability that Don would answer. Don wasn't quite sure how Charlie had figured that, but he went along with it.

Don didn't tell Charlie that he could call any time he wanted, and not just because Don hadn't been home since the night of the arrest and felt guilty. No, it had more to do with the fact that he hadn't been so miserable at work since the week  
before he left Albuquerque to return to L.A. Without Kim. Charlie's calls were little spots of brightness in his day, a hint of an outside world that still rattled on, oblivious to the turmoil that had overtaken his life. He hoarded them jealously.

He was glad that he'd kept Charlie out of the mess to the extent that he'd been able. In fact, after Charlie had given his statement that first horrible day, Don had banished his brother from the office, telling Charlie in no uncertain terms not to return until Don gave the all-clear.

Charlie had acquiesced with little fuss; Don suspected he was too upset by what had happened to deal with Megan and David's pain as well. But now, whether driven by guilt or simple loneliness, Charlie was calling Don every day at precisely 11:58 AM, just to shoot the breeze with his big brother.

"Hey, Charlie."

"Don. How's it going?"

Don shrugged. "Same old, same old. How about on your end of things?"

"Good." Quiet sigh. "Boring. Larry came to visit. He even mentioned that he's starting to think about revising his zero-point energy paper."

"That's great." Don grinned. "Say hi for me, will you?"

"Sure. He, ah, he hasn't seen Megan yet. He seems okay with that, to tell you the truth, but I know he's working his way up to--to calling her, so you might pass that along."

No, I am not going to pass that along. Don glanced around, catching sight of a grim-faced Megan sitting at her desk, her shoulders hunched up around her ears. Larry had better hurry up, he thought sadly, or pretty soon we're all going to lose Megan.

"So." Charlie cleared his throat. "Weekend's coming up and Dad finally picked out a new grill. Any chance of you stopping by to help us baptize it?"

Don shook off an image of billowing steam as a hot grill was dunked in water. "Can't promise anything, Charlie."

"Oh." Very soft. "You should--you should probably at least try to call Dad--"

"I know. I will."

"What are you doing?" The words burst out of Charlie in a flood of anger and frustration, and Don sighed, realizing he'd just hit the limit of his brother's patience.

"Charlie, you know I'm not here by choice," he said, keeping his voice quiet.

"But what are you doing? And how can I not be able to help? I'm--I'm ready to come back now--"

"That's not it." Don rubbed his forehead. As much as he looked forward to these calls, for the last week he had still somehow ended up with a headache for lunch. "I know you want to help and believe me, I wish you could. But all we're doing is going back through two years of cases and pulling the ones that involved information Colby might have wanted to--sell." He dropped his voice on the last word, but he still heard David slam a stapler with far too much force. Charlie, he thought, you really don't want to be here.

"There can't be that many cases, can there? The Chinese wouldn't be interested in gangs and drugs and pedophiles--"

"And vertical takeoff and landing vehicles that look like UFOs and our response to the threat of Sarin in the water system and a computer program that can hide planes from air traffic control. And so on, and so on."

"Oh."

That one small, forlorn word jabbed at Don. He dredged up a smile and hoped his brother could hear it in his voice. "And you, Charlie."

"What?"

"I'm sure Colby told the Chinese about you. I've been thinking that maybe I should put a man on you, make sure they don't steal away our secret weapon." He looked up at a hint of movement; Megan was eyeing him and the tight lines around her mouth had softened just a touch. He grinned at her. "Does CalSci have any Conversational Mandarin classes? Maybe you should sign up."

Dead silence, then a deep breath, and Don had to resist the urge to put Charlie on speaker. "Don, don't be ridiculous. There are some excellent mathematicians in China... Do you really think--"

"No, Charlie. I don't really think. Though they'd be smart if they did." Megan almost smiled before she turned back to her computer monitor.

"I know a few words of Mandarin," Charlie offered. "From that conference I went to in Beijing five years ago." Don had still been in Albuquerque. Now that Charlie mentioned it, Don had seen him in an "I Survived the Great Wall" t-shirt. He didn't bring me one. "Ni hao ma, zai jian, qing, xie xie."

"What did you just say?"

"Hello, good-bye, please, thank you. And wo bu dong. I said that a lot."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know."

Don snorted. "Well, if you don't know, why'd you say it?"

Charlie snorted back. "No, Don, it literally means 'I don't know.'"

"Oh." Don chuckled. "And who's on first."

"Yeah." They shared a few moments of companionable silence. Then, "Come home tomorrow."

"I'll try, Charlie, I'll try. But we have less than two weeks to compile a list of these cases. A week from Wednesday we submit it to the DOJ and see which ones we get to take a crack at Colby on. And it's not just our cases we're working here--the IT department's dug up two years worth of data base archives to see if there are any queries by Colby into other cases."

"So--you're going to see him again?" Charlie's tone was undecipherable, and once again Don was glad he'd banished his brother. Too bad he couldn't banish what was left of his team as well; Megan's brief smile was completely gone and David's back drew one rigid line.

"Yeah." And how did Don feel? Don was talking to Charlie. During Don's talks with Charlie thoughts on such depressing subjects weren't allowed. After Charlie hung up, well, Don would figure out another reason why thoughts on such depressing subjects weren't allowed. "Two weeks from today. Nine AM sharp. I probably won't be able to talk to you at lunch."

"Maybe I'll--"

"Don't even say it," Don warned. Damn. Now Charlie had two weeks' warning to try to weasel himself an invitation to Colby's questioning.

"I could probably--"

"Charlie."

"If I can prove to you--"

"Charlie."

Hurt silence. Then, "He was my friend too."

"Charlie," said Don, very softly, "Charlie, we don't know what he was. Or what he is now." He pinched the bridge of his nose. Definitely--headache for lunch. "Look, we'll talk about this later, okay?"

"Whatever."

Don winced. "Look--can you postpone the baptism? I'm sure by next weekend I'll be able to get away for a bit."

Another sigh. "Call Dad, then."

A click, and Don snapped his phone shut with a muffled curse.

"Charlie okay?" asked David, and Don thought that maybe he should put all of Charlie's calls on speaker. The distraction would do everyone good, pull them all out of their own heads for a time. Give them someone else to worry about.

"I don't know," he replied. "I was so concerned with making sure I didn't drag him into the mud with me that I didn't think he might need us to help him--process."

David scratched his beard thoughtfully. "He's got Amita and your dad."  
Don nodded, but from what he'd heard in Charlie's voice, Amita and his father weren't cutting it.

"Besides," said Megan, without looking around, "it's not like the rest of us are getting an opportunity to process anything either."

Don swallowed at the bitterness in her voice. He exchanged a worried glance with David, then turned back to his desk. The afternoon and evening stretched before him until even the chance to escape to his cold, empty apartment seemed an eternity away.

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Soon, too soon. The moments until Eppes would be delivered to him were ticking away, and Iago wasn't ready.

"Sir?"

Iago flipped through the file documenting all of Eppes' recent kills and nodded. Definitely material to work with here. The agent had been a busy man since he'd come to L.A. Damn. He'd even killed Gates, Iago's last weapon.

"Sir?"

Next file on the stack was a set of case notes for Eppes' therapy sessions with someone named Bradford. Man seemed thorough, Iago had to give him that. Too bad he wasn't as thorough when it came to his office's security. The notes revealed more fodder for the coming ordeal: trust issues, commitment issues, self-esteem issues, abandonment issues. The stuff about his brother the NSA consultant looked interesting--

"Sir!"

Iago looked up. Staring down at him was a junior agent, one of Raymond's people. An unreasoning jolt of fear shot through him--he hated being looked at, he never wanted to be looked at, to catch anyone's attention was bad--but he forced the fear down, counted his breaths until his heartbeat acquiesced, and set the folder aside. "What is it?"

"I thought you might like to review our preparations, sir."

Iago nodded and rose. He almost stumbled with his first step, but consciously forced himself to take long strides and swing his arms at his sides, now that the shackles were gone.

He thought back to the previous day. Not long after he'd claimed his name, most of the suits had risen and filed out, leaving only Curtis, Raymond, Iago, and Iago's Army handler standing behind him. The first thing Iago had demanded was the removal of the shackles, a shower, a shave, and a set of street clothes. His handler had protested vociferously.

"Look. I have to be an authority figure. Eppes has to believe that with one word, I can change his fate--mold it to whatever I want. He won't believe it if I don't believe it."

"We have plenty of highly-skilled interrogators on call, Sir," Marshall, the handler, had pointed out. "Why not call one of them in?"

Curtis had merely smiled. "Because our friend Iago here is already tainted. Aren't you, Iago?"

Iago had stared down at the table, hands clenched around the chains of his shackles, and nodded. Tainted.

In the end, Iago had gotten everything he wanted. Marshall was gone, and Raymond was assigned to watch him. He was to be treated politely, if not with actual respect. Curtis had games of his own. Iago tried to tell himself that all he had to do was play within the boundaries of Curtis' game, and maybe he could make up a few of his own rules.

He followed the junior agent around the section of warehouse that had been modified for his use. With the constraints he'd been given, there wasn't much he was going to be able to do. A water hose, shackles set at the proper height for stress positioning, lights, a white noise generator... The retrieval team already had the hood, goggles, and earmuffs. The requirements for Eppes to have no marks and seemingly be functional were a pain in the ass. He was going to have to rely on accumulated sleep deprivation, sensory assaults, drugs, and the insights he was gaining from Eppes' records.

Raymond would probably call it a "challenge."

Iago nodded his approval of the setup and returned to his stack of folders. He reached for Eppes' case notes again and--

On the top of the stack lay a book. It hadn't been there when he'd left. The title was obscured by a note that read in spidery handwriting, "Thought you could use this--Curtis." Cautiously, Iago picked it up and read the spine.

New Methods in Operant Conditioning and Its Impact on Neuroanatomy, by Stanford Davis.

His second kill.

Iago's hands began to shake. He dropped the book back onto the stack of folders and shoved clenched fists into his pockets.

He'd never actually done this. After his brother Porter had told him what had happened, he'd studied it, watched videos, conducted interviews with victims, but he'd never actually done it himself. With his weapons, all he'd had to do was remind them what had already been done to them, supply them with drugs and guns, and send them off to do what came naturally. He'd point, they'd shoot.

Iago had never actually tortured anyone before.

"They're about to pick him up. Are you ready?"

Iago spun around. Raymond watched him--not unsympathetically, he thought. "Tell me again what I get if I do this?"

"It's what you won't get if you do this, Iago. You know that."

Iago closed his eyes and nodded. He had to do this. But he had to do this his own way, because he wanted more than for faceless people to stop hurting him.

Too bad he didn't believe in God anymore, because mercy sounded really nice right now.

"I'm ready," he said.


	3. Chapter 3

All disclaimers still in place.

**E is for Enemy, Part 3**

Don's eyes snapped open and he flung himself to one side, landing in a crouch on the carpet beside the bed. A monotonous drone drilled into his brain, sparking flashes of images (too loud no sound too bright so dark too hot so cold oh god it hurts--). His heart hammered in his chest. Every muscle was tense, every nerve on fire, every breath burned in his lungs as he fought down the urge to stand and run. It wasn't safe, he wasn't safe, he wanted his gun, but how could he get to his gun when they were waiting for him--

The droning cut out, to be replaced by jarring percussion and a harsh voice crooning the same words over and over:

I do not want this--  
I do not want this--

Don spun around and dragged himself up the front of the nightstand, scrabbling for the alarm clock. He yanked it off the nightstand, fumbled with knobs and buttons until he wanted to scream--

Don't you tell me how I feel--

--then grabbed the cord and pulled.

Harsh breaths filled the resulting silence. Don let the clock drop, watched as it bounced on the carpet and rolled to a stop, half under the bed. His bed. It was his alarm clock and he'd pulled it down from his nightstand next to his bed. It had been playing that horrible song because he had it tuned to an alternative rock station guaranteed to play music he couldn't stand, the better to get him out of bed in the morning.

His chest continued to heave as he desperately tried to calm his breathing. He looked down at himself, ran his hands over his arms, his thighs, his stomach. Swallowed. His throat felt raw.

He was wearing the same ratty old FBI t-shirt and sweats he always wore to bed. The morning sun slanted through the blinds to hit the far wall the way it did every morning.

His heart would not slow down.

Don closed his eyes and scrubbed at his face with both hands. What the hell had happened? Dream. It must have been a dream, a doozy of a dream, but even as he thought to snatch at lingering images, part of him shied away, and he was forced to confront the reaction of his body.

Terror. Pure terror.

"Some dream," he whispered, and had to swallow again.

Don had to use the bed to haul himself to his feet, staggering a little as he straightened. His vision narrowed dangerously and he froze, just trying to breathe until the dizziness passed. Maybe he should head over to Charlie's for a while; this mess with Colby was obviously affecting him more than he'd thought.

He shook his head. Don had been using the prospect of finally going to see his father and brother as an incentive for getting through this ordeal. Besides, Megan and David were not going to be taking any extended lunch breaks. Don intended to stay with them. He intended to hold his team together by becoming the glue they clung to.

Charlie and Dad would have to wait.

Don stumbled to the bathroom. Shower, first, then coffee. Though he wasn't sure he needed coffee--he could feel his heart still pounding too fast, too hard, and now that he was mostly awake a strange energy thrummed through him. Even the shower failed to relax him, the feel of the needle spray on his body threatening to pull up dream images he'd already decided he didn't want to face.

He cut his shower short. He had enough on his plate right now.

During the drive to the FBI offices, Don struggled to regain control: of his emotions, of his physiological responses. But the glare of sunlight on pavement seemed somehow stronger than usual; the sounds of traffic more intrusive. He found himself swearing at other drivers, having to force down the urge to tailgate--or worse. By the time he pulled into the parking garage, he was drenched in sweat. He made himself sit behind the wheel until he felt his professional mask slide back on.

What the hell is wrong with you, Eppes?

He had no answer. With a final sigh, Don slid out of the SUV and trudged toward the elevator. Three other agents boarded with him; Purcell and Choi from Crimes against Children and Collins from Counterintelligence. None of them met his eye, but when he turned to face front, he could feel their stares.

Hey, that's Eppes.

Isn't he the one who gave the spy on his team a second chance?

Yeah, poor bastard. Heard he was a good agent. Too bad it'll end like this--

The door slid open and Purcell and Choi stepped off. Leaving Collins, from Counterintelligence. Don stiffened, jaw clenched, fists tight against his sides. Once more, his heart raced and he had to fight his breathing. No imagined dialogue, just the feel of the woman's eyes on the back of his head, the feel of her contempt, the feel of his failure. The door slid open again and he struggled to keep his head up as he escaped onto his floor.

David, intent on his monitor, sketched a wave but didn't look around as Don passed on the way to his cubicle. "Looks like Colby was poking into some cybercrime cases," he called.

"Great." Don thought of Collins and sank wearily into his chair. He cleared his throat. "Add it to the list."

"You feeling okay?"

Don looked up. David was watching him, one eyebrow raised. "Yeah--throat's a little scratchy, maybe." He looked around as he powered up his computer. "Megan not in yet?"

David shook his head as his gaze dropped down to his keyboard and his hands pressed flat against the top of his desk. He took a deep breath and turned. "Don, about Megan--"

Knowing what was coming, Don raised a hand. "I know, David, I know."

"Man, Larry had better get his head out of his--"

"David."

David shrugged, looked away, but the pain in his eyes was too raw for him to hide.

"How about you? You doing okay?"

David shrugged again, turned back to his monitor. "I just wish I'd quit finding Colby's name in these records," he muttered.

Don sighed and turned to his own computer. The monitor flickered oddly, drawing his gaze, and he froze. A feeling of unease slid into him like ice water injected into a vein, spreading and building until he felt like he couldn't breathe, until he felt like he had that morning, cowering on the carpet in his bedroom. The ice water settled in his gut, turned into a conviction that he was no longer in control, that unknown forces owned him now.

"Don?"

A hand on his shoulder, and he jerked at the touch. Megan, one arm still in her jacket, frowned down at him. The frown deepened as he blinked and licked dry lips.

"You okay there, Don?"

He managed to nod. "Yeah. Not sleeping too well. Must have zoned out for a second."

She studied him for a moment longer, then turned back to her own desk. "Yeah," she said. "I hear you with that. Not that we have the option to catch up on any sleep just because it's Saturday." She finished taking off her jacket and slung it over the back of her chair with unnecessary force. David stopped typing for a moment and then resumed.

Don swallowed. The conviction that he was in trouble hadn't faded, but he was still glad Megan hadn't seen anything wrong, was too mired in her own misery to look any deeper into his eyes. And he was glad because--because--

Because he didn't trust her.

He swallowed again and looked over at his other remaining agent. Now that he thought of it, he didn't really trust David, either.

After the first mess with Dwayne Carter, Don had tried hard, so hard to trust Colby again. He'd convinced himself that Colby's problem wasn't disloyalty, but too much loyalty to his old Army buddy.

And see where that got me. 

Now, just when he needed David and Megan, he could no longer trust them. David was too broken and Megan too bitter for Don to believe either of them could really watch his back.

Don turned back to his computer and logged in with shaking fingers. No one to trust. No one to turn to.

He was alone.

2.718281828459 2.718281828459 2.718281828459 2.718281828459 2.718281828459 2.718281828459

The images would not leave Iago alone.

The FBI agent, naked, hooded, shackled to the wall. He'd known when the agent came out of the drugs to find himself in a black, soundless, pain-filled place. Known when the hallucinations started. Iago hadn't known which was worse--when the screaming started, or when it stopped.

He tried to distract himself with the piles of paper in his lap: more background on Eppes' family. Iago was supposed to be looking for material he could use against the agent, and he wasn't surprised to find it. Families were fertile ground for stress triggers, after all. Just look what his brother Porter's death had done to him.

Iago found the information about the NSA consultant brother interesting for other reasons. He'd been relieved to learn that the brother--a mathematician named Charles Eppes--also consulted for the FBI. In fact, this Professor Eppes had helped put Iago away. Iago didn't know how much Shakespeare this mathematician knew, but if he'd unraveled Brutus chances were very good he knew enough.

"You need some sleep."

Iago jumped, papers spilling from the open folder to the cement floor. He clenched hands into fists to try to hide the tremors. How am I supposed to sleep with what I did last night? How am I supposed to live with what I did last night? He refused to look around. "I need more information, that's what I need, Agent Raymond."

Raymond circled around him and pulled up a chair. Iago ignored the scrutiny, tried to ignore the images in his head. Instead, he bent to scoop up fallen papers, flipping through them as he shuffled them into a tidy pile.

"Last night. You never mentioned the objective."

Iago finally looked up. "I have a schedule," he said, hunting around for another sheet of paper he could wave in Raymond's face. "I'm destroying his reality and replacing it with one where I am in control." Replacing it with pain and terror. "After three more nights of this, I'll hint that he can stop it. Then I wait until he asks me how. At that point it's time to work on the objective."

Raymond frowned. "What if he doesn't ask?"

Oh, he'll ask. He'll beg. Porter was begging at the end, and he didn't even know what he was begging for. "This whole operation is a risk. I hope your Assistant Director Curtis understands that the constraints he's put on my work are almost impossible to surmount--"

"Take it easy. Curtis is aware that this is a longshot. It's also the most expedient. We have other options."

"Exotic poisons," Iago muttered. "Focused microwaves."

"Which could be detected and raise questions. If this works, it'll look like a single shooter going for revenge. Very tidy."

Raymond studied him for so long that Iago was afraid the agent could actually read him--his doubts, his intent. His plans. "I have a schedule," Iago repeated. "I know what I'm doing."

"You may know what you're doing," Raymond finally said, "but can you go through with it?"

Iago stared back, mouth dry. Could he destroy an innocent man--a good man--to bring down these monsters? The men he'd chosen as weapons when he'd reactivated Brutus were men he'd sincerely considered shattered beyond repair. But this FBI agent was a decent man, a man with a purpose, a man who had friends and a family that loved him.

Raymond and the people he represented believed the ends justified the means--a cold conclusion, based on an intellectual exercise. Iago had once let his anger at his brother's treatment push him to the same conclusion. Now, staring into Raymond's clear, untroubled gaze, he had to admit that he still believed it.

Ironically, Agent Eppes had been the one to confront him on this, during his interrogation. "You tell me what's the difference between them and you," Eppes had said.

Iago would never get the chance to tell Eppes that the difference was simple.

Iago was a monster, but he knew it.


	4. Chapter 4

I'm so sorry this has taken so long to post. Real life has kicked in with a vengeance. Plus--this section proved very hard to write, for whatever reason. I spent a lot of time tinkering with it.

All disclaimers still in effect. By the time this is over, spoilers will include all of Season 3.

**E is for Enemy, Part 4**

Eleven fifty-eight AM, and right on time Don's cell phone rang. Charlie. Really, thought Don, you could set your watch by him. Regular, like an alarm.

Don wished he could wake up. He wished that lifting the phone to his ear, hearing his brother's voice, could pull him out of this nightmare of exhaustion and fear that was now his waking life. Instead, each successive conversation with Charlie grew more dreamlike, Charlie's determined cheerfulness more surreal. All the little homey tidbits about Dad and Millie and the koi and how Mrs. Feldman's fat orange tom had snuck into the garage last night and sprayed one of his chalkboards--all were part of another reality Don no lived in. A reality that somehow he knew he no longer deserved.

The phone rang.

"Are you going to get that, Don?" Megan swiveled around and peered at him over her reading glasses. He looked away and met David's eyes from the next cubical over.

Don picked up the phone. He didn't want to talk to Charlie, but he couldn't let Megan or David know anything was wrong, or they might--they might-- He wasn't sure what they'd do, he wished he could think more clearly, but he knew he couldn't trust them.

"Eppes."

"Finally, Don. What happened? Did you lose your phone in the restroom or something?"

"Very funny, Charlie."

Silence, and Don winced. There he went, hurting his little brother again. God, he was such an asshole. Everything he touched, he screwed up. No wonder Megan and David had turned against him. "I--I'm--" He closed his eyes and forced himself to loosen his grip on the phone. "How's it going?"

"I'm fine." Charlie cleared his throat. "Are you okay? You don't sound okay."

"Just tired," Don said, too quickly. He glanced over his shoulder at Megan, but she was once again engrossed in her own work. He turned back and caught sight of his monitor, the flickering shapes that danced across it threatening to illuminate his dreams. Don yanked open his top desk drawer and scrabbled for the ever-present pack of gum. He didn't know why, but lately a stick of gum was better than a double espresso for waking him up and clearing his head, and man, did he need it now. "Just tired," he repeated, when Charlie didn't say anything.

"Well, then it's a good thing it's Friday."

"What?"

"The baptism tomorrow."

Don blinked, and suddenly he had a glimpse of normal. "What? Charlie, we're Jewish."

"Dad's new grill. David and Megan are invited, too, of course. Are they there? Ask them."

The new grill. Another, clearer image flashed into Don's mind--his father, big and gruff and unsentimental, standing in front of the grill and brandishing a pair of tongs in one hand, a barbecue sauce-stained brush in the other. Don felt a faint smile touch his lips. Alan Eppes, Suburban Knight-Errant, armed with nothing but the traditional weapons of the middle class and ready to defend his family from all the evils the world had to offer.

Evils, Don suddenly realized, like his son.

Don. Not Megan. Not David. Don was the enemy.

The vision of his father vanished, taking some of Don with it. Don blinked at the monitor and tried to feel something--grief, sadness, fear--but the part of him he'd just lost had already felt so unreal he could only dredge up a faint regret. He realized that Charlie was still waiting, but he had no idea what to say. "Ask them yourself. I'm going to put you on speaker."

He pulled the phone from his ear even as he heard Charlie squeak, "Wait--" and set it down on his desk. "Hey. Charlie's got a question." He thumbed the button. "Okay. You're on."

Megan looked up at that, then scooted her chair over. David stood and leaned over the cubical wall. Don slowly pushed his chair away until he sat in the cubical door, a safe distance from the others. Neither of them seemed to notice.

"Can you all hear me?" Charlie's voice, tinny but clear.

"Hey, Charlie," said Megan, with the first hint of enthusiasm Don had heard in her voice since--probably since she'd been back. "How are you?"

"Hey, man," David echoed. "How's life on the outside?"

"Good," said Charlie. "Dull." Don could hear his sigh through the crappy little cell phone speaker. "We miss you guys."

"It'll be over soon," said David, but his tone was neither comforting nor encouraging. Just the facts.

"Then you'll have time for a little break tomorrow," said Charlie in a rush. "Dad got a new grill and he wants you to come over, help him break it in."

"Is this the conspicuous consumption grill?" asked Megan. Don could hear the smile in her voice.

"That's the one."

Megan shared a glance with David. "Well, all the different teams do have to get their lists into AD Wright by six tonight...bigger people than us will tussle with them over the weekend. We don't start prioritizing the final compilation until Monday."

"See. Perfect time for a break."

She sighed. "I sure could use one."

"Free food. Free beer," Charlie wheedled.

"We're not college students," Megan said, mock-annoyed.

"No, but you are government employees."

"Point taken. Okay, count me in."

David cleared his throat. "I--uh--promised the weekend to Claudia--"

"Bring her along. I don't think I've ever met her, and I know Dad hasn't."

"He's blushing," Megan crowed, and David glared at her.

"How can you tell?"

"I'm a profiler."

"Then it's settled. Tomorrow, three-ish. Just bring yourselves." Charlie sounded smug and happy, and Don didn't want to hear anymore.

"You can quit twisting our arms, man," David called as he retreated to his desk.

"Tomorrow at three," said Megan, as she scooted back to hers. "My god, something to look forward to. Who would have thought?"

Hang up, thought Don. Just hang up. He shoved himself toward the phone, grabbed it off the desk in a graceless, fumbling move. "See you tomorrow at three, Charlie."

Charlie's "Do--" was cut off by the phone slapping shut.

Don stared at it, lower lip caught between his teeth, but Charlie did not call back.

He let the phone drop onto his desk and scrubbed at his face with one hand. The image of his father with barbecue tools at the ready came back to him, but instead of finding it comical Don now saw it as--almost pure, in a way. Holy. Alan was the true guardian of what Don had sworn to preserve and protect.

Alan was certainly more qualified to be Charlie's protector. What had Don ever done for Charlie besides show him horrific visions, drag him into danger, take advantage of his talents, his trust? Alan had always known, from the time Don had joined the FBI, that his elder son was not to be trusted.

First Megan and David, and now his own father. All turned against him. And all with good reason. Don had a sudden urge to call Megan and David to him and tell them to lock him away. As far from Alan--as far from Charlie--as they possibly could.

But as quickly as that thought came another followed. Not yet. There was something left for him to do. Something that could--fix things. Not completely--he was too far gone to ever be completely fixed, but after he did that one thing, then maybe he could rest.

"I do not want this," he whispered.

Such a shame there was so little good left in him. He only hoped that lying to Charlie hadn't used it all up.

2.718281828459 2.718281828459 2.718281828459 2.718281828459 2.718281828459

Megan pulled up to the curb in front of Charlie's house closer to four than three. Fashionably late, she thought. Ah, who was she trying to kid? Damned lucky she'd shown up at all. She peered into the driveway, seeing Amita's convertible and Charlie's little blue Prius. David's red Jeep was parked on the street on the other side of the driveway entrance.

No sign of a 1934 Model A. She let her eyes slide closed and her shoulders slump, and wondered if she was relieved or disappointed. She honestly couldn't say.

Megan took a deep breath and forced her head up, her shoulders back. Beautiful day, birds were singing, free beer, free food, yada yada yada. She plastered on a smile as she climbed out of the car, hoping to hide the exhaustion that had settled permanently into her bones. She felt as tired as Don had been looking lately--

Megan stopped, hand still on the open door of her sedan. Another car was missing. Don's big black SUV.

Damned coward. Megan slammed her car door shut and started up the driveway, her irritation fading. Don hadn't been looking too good the last few days. No doubt he'd been making himself sick thinking about the inevitable investigation. After this whole circus with Colby was over, the brass would be asking questions, wondering why Colby had gone undetected for so long.

They'd find out that Colby had been detected once, and given another chance. By his team leader, SAC Eppes, who probably wasn't going to be SAC much longer. Don wasn't stupid. He had to see it coming.

Megan slowed as she approached the front porch. She should check in with him, offer the old shoulder to cry on. Maybe they could trade off.

In the meantime, it really was a beautiful day.

Screw it. Megan knocked on the front door.

David answered, and Megan pulled back. One eyebrow went up. David shrugged. "Amita's shelling hardboiled eggs, Alan's at the grill, and lord knows where Charlie is." David gestured with his free hand--well, not quite free, it held a beer--and Megan ducked past him, grinning.

She paused in the living room, sniffing appreciatively. Alan's barbecue sauce was the best. She raised a hand, curved in a half-circle. David snorted and slid his beer into it. "Only because I thank god you're here," he said, and Megan turned to study him over the bottle as she took a swig. David had aggressively dressed down: faded jeans, old SUNY sweatshirt with frayed collar and cuffs. But David did not look relaxed. He prowled around the living room like a caged bear.

First guess, girl trouble. "Where's Claudia?"

"Out in the yard with Alan. They hit it off right away."

"Go figure," Megan murmured.

"I swear, if it wasn't for Alan I think I'd have taken off already."

Oh. Second guess--

"Charlie is driving me nuts."

Megan clapped a hand over her mouth, trying to keep her second swig of beer from reappearing. Finally, she managed to swallow it down with minimal burning in her nose. "You don't say."

David stopped pacing and dropped heavily to the couch. "He wants in on Friday."

Megan was glad she hadn't taken another swig; she wouldn't have been able to hold it in. "What's his justification?"

"He really doesn't have one." David leaned forward, elbows propped on knees, and let his shoulders slump. "I think he just wants to see, to see Colby for himself, to hear for himself--" David covered his mouth with one hand and stared at the floor.

"He doesn't understand."

David pushed himself back, grinned at her crookedly. "Don must have had an idea he was going to pull this. You'll note who is conspicuously absent right now."

Megan sank down next to him and offered him the bottle. He waved it off and she took another sip. A little too warm and already half-flat, it tasted like heaven, and she was so tired right now it would probably be enough to give her a buzz. "Isn't there some saying about discretion and valor?" she asked softly.

"What do you mean?"

She shrugged, slumped lower, picked at the label on the beer bottle. "I mean, cut the man some slack. You know how Don is about his job. He's looking at losing everything. I don't think he's doing too well right now."

"You think that's it?" David held out his hand, and she almost told him he'd missed his chance, but relented and surrendered the beer.

"Yeah. What else could it be?"

Instead of drinking, David sat forward and rolled the bottle between his palms. "What about us?" he finally asked.

Megan stared blindly into the dim room, shuttered against the afternoon heat. She suddenly realized that she was almost grateful for the last two weeks, because sometimes they'd made her forget about the six weeks that had preceded them. "I don't think I care."

"Megan!"

"Your turn." David bounced up from the couch and took off as Charlie bustled toward them. Charlie, intent on new prey, let him go. Damn him, thought Megan. He still has the beer.

"Megan, have you seen Don?" Charlie settled next to her and as she watched him repeatedly scrub his palms over his thighs any snide comment she might have made about Don and babysitting died in her throat. Charlie's eyes were shadowed, his mouth tight, and Megan didn't need to profile him to see he was upset. She shook her head as she caught his hands and stilled them between her own.

"Neither have I." Charlie pulled away and tucked his fingers between his knees. "I called, I left messages. Nothing. I even went to his apartment this morning. He wasn't there. His car was."

Megan frowned. That was a little odd.

"I know, I know." Charlie answered her unspoken protest. "He's a grown man, he's very private, he doesn't want us to worry. But I thought after Ashby--" His voice faded. Megan wasn't the only one to call Charlie an open book, but she felt like a speed reader as she watched the complex play of emotions that flickered across his face. He shook himself and met her gaze. "He also doesn't lie to me and he said he'd come."

David's complaint came back to her. "Is there something in particular you want to talk to Don about?"

Charlie hesitated, choosing his words carefully. "I know I'm not supposed to be there Friday, but--" He looked away. "I thought maybe if I could--could see him, I could understand."

Megan sighed. "You and me both." She coaxed one of Charlie's hands out from between his knees and held it. "But we may never understand. You realize that, don't you?" He gave a tight little nod. "One thing you do have to understand is that Don isn't keeping you out Friday just to mess with you. He can't let you see Colby again. He's not in control here."

Charlie straightened and turned to her, his eyes widening. "What do you mean?"

"I mean Colby was on our team and he was a spy," Megan said quietly. She took no satisfaction from Charlie's flinch. "We're not exactly in line for commendations. And it's worse for your brother. He covered for Colby. There will be repercussions. Professional repercussions."

Charlie pulled away from her and stood. "I never considered--"

The joys of tenure, she thought, and felt a little stab of shame that she could still be petty at this moment.

"I--I need to talk to him. Would Liz know?"

Megan winced. Maybe the thought of Liz led too easily to thoughts of--someone else, but suddenly Megan wanted that beer. Too bad the prospect of a decent buzz just kept getting farther and farther away. "Nope. Liz would not know."

Charlie blinked at her.

Megan leaned in conspiratorially. "Liz is a career-minded kind of gal, and your brother, David and I--not up for commendations doesn't go far enough. We're more like this little leper colony right in the middle of the FBI building."

Charlie stopped fidgeting, and she felt her breath catch as he turned the full intensity of his gaze on her. "Megan. I--I'm so sorry."

Tears stung, and in that moment Megan could almost convince herself she hated Charlie. Neither Don nor David had looked at her like this; they respected her too much to reflect her own pain back to her. But Charlie--once Charlie got out of his head and looked around him he saw everything. Charlie, the open book. Megan could read her every bleeding wound on his face.

"I have to go." She stood and pushed past him, yanking her arm away before he could even touch her.

"Megan--"

"I have to leave now, Charlie." She did, too; her throat was closing up, cutting off her air, and her shaking hands fumbled with the doorknob. Fight or flight, and she couldn't punch Don's little brother, now, could she?

Megan finally managed to open the front door.

Larry stood on the threshold, fist poised to knock.

Megan froze, shock blanking her mind. For a moment all she could do was drink in the sight of him: the soft curly hair, soft face, soft eyes, soft, uncertain smile taking hold of his lips--those soft lips--

Larry was soft and gentle in a way that her life was not, and might never be again.

That thought released her. She stepped back so she could look from Larry to Charlie, who had the gall to nod at her encouragingly.

"Megan?"

That soft voice. She turned back to Larry and swallowed. "Move, Larry. I can't do this now. And if you need backup to talk to me, you're not ready either."

Megan forced herself to face the hurt in Larry's eyes. "Backup? You mean Charles? Dear Megan--"

"It was my idea, Megan!"

"Please understand."

Something snapped.

Megan pushed through the door, sending Larry back one stumbling step, then two. "Understand? You don't know how much time I've spent understanding you, Larry. Understanding your need for structure, understanding how important your work is, understanding why you had to go live up in that tin can for months without me." The tears were starting now, but she was too angry to care. "I even tried to understand why you didn't want to see me when I got back. But you know what? All that crap about Newton's apple and the M57 Nebula isn't enough for me to go on anymore. I'm done. It's your turn to understand me."

With one more step she backed Larry off the front porch. He stopped, one hand raised, and closed his eyes. "Megan--"

He's so damned soft. Megan forced herself to step away. She looked at Charlie, who was staring at her in shock, then back to Larry, who hadn't moved. She leaned toward him, and he shuddered at the feel of her breath on his cheek. "Let me give you your first lesson. Maybe us little people aren't as important or worth as much as you geniuses, but our hearts break into just as many teeny tiny pieces. Think about it." She pulled back and looked at Charlie again. "Both of you."

Charlie fled. Megan circled around Larry, careful not to touch him, and headed down the driveway.

"As long as you understand that I never meant to hurt you," Larry called after her.

Megan did not look back.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N -- I am so sorry this has taken so long to update. No excuses, just real life, good and bad. I promise to speed up posts. All previous disclaimers apply.

**E is for Enemy, Part 5**

Charlie followed Don's SUV through the dark streets at a careful, inconspicuous distance. He wasn't worried about losing his brother; Don was apparently going home, a conclusion supported both his behavior the previous night and by the fact that Don's apartment complex was only two blocks ahead.

Charlie slowed as he crossed the intersection and watched his brother signal before turning into the complex driveway. As Don vanished, Charlie's cell phone, on the passenger seat next to him, beeped. A text message. Charlie ignored it. He knew what it read.

Charlie circled around the complex once before following Don and finding a parking spot that satisfied his criteria: a view of Don's living room window and a view of the route to the complex entrance in case Don left again. He pulled in and shut off the lights. He was staking out his brother's apartment. Larry was right. In a universe ruled by quantum events, anything was possible.

This should be more than a stake-out. He should be getting out of the car and going up to talk to his brother. True, he had promised Don yesterday to back off until after Colby's interrogation, but that was before his conversation with Dr. Bradford had pushed his worry over the edge into fear.

Charlie shut off the engine. Whether or not he dredged up the courage to go talk to his brother, he planned to be there for a while.

Charlie picked up the cell phone and tossed it nervously from hand to hand. It beeped again and he dropped it in his lap as though the sounds were electrical pulses, propagating along his nerves to shock his heart. He picked it back up, took a deep breath, and flipped it open.

6734. 6734. 6734. The same message, over and over, all from Don. Charlie glanced up at Don's window and saw a light go on. He took a deep breath and reached for the door handle.

The light went off again.

Charlie sank back in his seat and stared at the window until he had to blink, then looked down at the number on the readout and ran through the relationships and permutations he'd already discerned in those four simple digits. Two sets of consecutive numbers, both ascending. Three plus four equals seven, three times the square root of four equals six, four plus the square root of four equals six. Sum of the digits, twenty. Sum of sixty-seven and thirty-four, one hundred and one... A message he'd received from his brother over twenty times in the last two days. Numbers. Numbers he did not understand.

Just days ago any attempt to truly understand Don had seemed a frivolous intellectual exercise at best, a waste of time at worst. Not that his brother was a total mystery to him, but he had to admit that he understood people like Larry and Amita and Millie more. Don was...Don, his big brother, an unending presence in his life. Not unchanging; over the years the graph that plotted what Charlie privately thought of as the Don-function had roamed all throughout the co-ordinate axes, sometimes spiraling away from him and out of sight, sometimes dipping into negative values, but, thought Charlie, always smooth, always continuous.

Continuous enough that Charlie had long ago discovered a little trick. F(d), the Don-function, might remain a mystery, but single points on the curve could often be approximated. When Don did something particularly incomprehensible, like buy dinner or volunteer for Aunt Irene duty or shut him out of a case, Charlie could usually come up with what amounted to a Taylor series describing Don's life around that point. Given the right value for a in the summation--a woman, a case, that morning's traffic, a good stint in the batting cage--Charlie could describe what was going on to a reasonable degree. After all, if anyone was infinitely differentiable at all points on the curve, it was Don.

He felt a little guilty about it sometimes, using math--even if it was only metaphorical math--to analyze his brother. Amita would laugh at him; his father would be appalled. Megan and David would give each other their "that's Charlie" looks.

But Don would understand. Charlie could almost hear him: Hey, whatever works.

Not anymore.

Charlie could no longer describe the curve of his brother's life. It was as if Don was crashing toward some horrible discontinuity, and if he hit it before Charlie could reach him, Charlie would have no way of knowing what shape the curve would take on the other side.

He stared up at his brother's apartment, willing himself to get out of the car. It wasn't as if he needed proof that his brother was in trouble. He had plenty of proof.

INCIDENT 1: PROOF BY INDUCTION

After Saturday's disastrous barbecue, Larry spends the rest of that day and most of Sunday alternately obsessing over Megan's words and bemoaning the fact that he's lost her. Two conversational infinite loops, while Charlie has only one: "Don't say that, Larry."

Sunday afternoon as they settle into Charlie's car for the trip to the monastery, Larry finally manages to invoke some sort of mental GOTO statement to execute a branch. "Charles, really. Stop telling me what and what not to say. This grows tiresome."

Only now?

"I have lost Megan. I am not overly-dramatizing the situation, I am not simply wallowing in self-pity. I am basing the assertion on known quantities."

Charlie keeps quiet while he backs the Prius out of the driveway, the beeping of the little car in reverse too distracting to allow him to comfortably form a response. Hell, driving itself is too distracting; after backing out, he pulls over to the curb and parks. "Known quantities? You're talking about feelings, Larry. Megan's feelings. And your own."

"I'm doing her the courtesy of believing she knows what she wants, Charles." Larry stares straight ahead, forefingers tented under his nose. "She stated quite strongly that she wants to be understood."

"And you have a problem with that?"

"As a matter of fact, I do." A quick, sideways glance. "I don't want to understand Megan."

"What?" Charlie's glad he pulled over. "But Larry, you're the one who keeps talking about how important it is to take that risk, to make that human connection. Isn't understanding Megan precisely the sort of risk you've always advocated?"

"Perhaps I should have remained a theoretician in this arena."

It's Laurel Wilson all over again. "Too late for that, Larry. Megan cares for you now."

"Cared, Charles. As for why--that was always a mystery to me. Megan herself was--is--a mystery. A beautiful mystery, akin to the delicate patterns formed by ionized gasses in a planetary nebula, the intricate dance of a triple star system--"

Not for the first time, Charlie wants to strangle his mentor. "You're certainly going to lose her if you won't even let her be a human being."

Larry flinches, his fingers pressing into his lips. Charlie is relentless. "Maybe she doesn't want to be a mystery. Maybe she just wants to be the woman you love."

Larry remains silent the rest of the drive. Charlie stops pushing and instead tries to come up with a reasonable course of action. Amita once successfully used Game Theory to convince Larry to pursue a possible relationship, and he and Laurel Wilson came out of it on good enough terms they still occasionally hike together, but Charlie discards the notion of calling in Amita with a slight shake of his head. The stakes are higher now, and it's not a game.

This is going to take some thought and Larry is not in a receptive mood, so Charlie lets his mind wander. Megan's expression flashes before him; the almost-snarl that twisted her lips as she spat out, "our hearts break just like yours." Right before she turned to Charlie and said, "Think about it. Both of you." There's only one person Megan could have been telling him to think about, and that's Don.

Charlie's not sure he understands Megan's point. No, he doesn't truly get Don and he never has, but he gets enough. Besides, it doesn't matter. They've been many things to each other over the years, but first and foremost they're brothers. They can try to ignore their blood, they can try to renounce it, but they can never change it.

Charlie glances at Larry. The far-away look in his friend's eyes tell him that Larry is once again contemplating cosmic mysteries--whether Megan or active galactic nuclei, Charlie can't tell. The look Larry gets on his face when contemplating either is very much the same.

Larry has labeled Megan, he realizes. Megan the mystery. Megan the miracle. He's slotted her into her own location on some human H-R diagram--definitely off the main sequence, but, as with a star on a real H-R diagram, Larry thinks that location tells him everything he needs to know. Megan has no say in her own existence.

Charlie turns back to the road and gnaws at his lower lip. Don the big brother. Don the pain in the ass. Don the god-damned hero. Is this what Megan means? By classifying and quantifying and labeling, has Charlie avoided learning who his brother really is?

Maybe, thinks Charlie, understanding Don is a little more important than he realized. If nothing else, Don might appreciate it if Charlie would just let him be Don.

They pull into the empty guest parking lot. Larry still won't look at Charlie, only responding to Charlie's final, quiet, "It's not too late to meet her half-way."

One leg out of the car, Larry turns back, and Charlie recoils from the pain on his face. "I don't even understand myself, Charles. How am I to attempt to understand someone as complex and as beautiful as Megan?"

Charlie musters all the gentleness he possesses when he puts his hand over Larry's. "Just decide if you want to try. I think that will be enough."

QED

So much for understanding Don. Charlie took one more deep breath, slid his phone into his pocket, fingered the extra apartment key already there. Don had either been incommunicado or incomprehensible since Charlie had made his resolution.

He scanned the apartment buildings, the tiny squares of manicured grass, the spiky clumps of agapanthus that constituted the management's idea of landscaping, all as though he expected to see--something. Someone lurking, some black sedan ready to pull away. He saw nothing, but climbing out of the car still left him with an itchy feeling in the middle of his back.

Charlie wished he'd parked closer to Don's apartment building. He wished Megan was with him, or David. But Megan still wasn't speaking to him and David would only spout the party line: "Leave Don alone, Charlie. His problem is he's looking at losing his job. We all are."

That wasn't the problem. Even when Charlie had talked to David Tuesday, he'd known that wasn't the problem. Neither was the fact that Don would not answer his phone. The problem, as Charlie saw it before yesterday evening, was that Don had promised to come Saturday, and Don did not lie. Don sometimes hedged, Don often evaded, but Don did not lie.

After yesterday evening, Charlie didn't know what the problem was. He only knew that it was worse than he'd ever imagined.

INCIDENT 2: PROOF BY CONTRADICTION

Charlie bypasses all the guest parking spots in the FBI parking garage and cruises the floors until he finds his brother's SUV. He backs into a spot that lets him keep the big, black Suburban in view and settles down to wait. He doesn't want to go up to the office where Don will bustle around, too busy to talk, Megan will glare, and David will disappear. No, Charlie wants to talk to Don alone.

His plan almost backfires. Afraid he'd become too engrossed in his work if he brought any paper with him, Charlie's brought nothing; when Don shows up it's almost nine and Charlie is dozing with his head propped uncomfortably against the driver's side window. The loud beep as Don unlocks his car jolts Charlie awake and he sits up, licking his lips and blinking in confusion. Don has almost reached the Suburban before events click back into place in Charlie's head. He scrambles out of the car and sprints across the garage, mouth open--

His brother's name dies in his throat.

Don stands frozen by the driver's side door, shoulders hunched tight, hands clenched in white fists at his side. His face is a blank, sweat-drenched mask. As Charlie draws closer he can see the muscles jumping in Don's jaw, see the sinews standing out in the back of Don's hand, hear his brother's labored breathing. Then, with no change in expression, Don swings one fist high and brings it down like a hammer, smashing it into the car window. Charlie slams to a stop against the rear door, afraid to come any closer.

"Don." Charlie's voice comes out a shocked whisper. "What's wrong?"

Don snatches his hand away from the car as though it burns. He turns to Charlie. "Yond Cassius," he mutters.

Don's lost, confused expression pulls Charlie forward. Now that he can look his brother in the face, he has to wonder what's wrong with Megan and David. Depression, hell. His brother is sick. Maybe he doesn't understand Don, but he understands that much. Gray skin, hollow cheeks, shadowed eyes...has Don's downward slide been so gradual his teammates didn't notice? Are they sunk so deep into their own misery they can't see?

"What?" Charlie asks, trying to keep his voice light. "You think I look lean and hungry?" He leans backed, eyes Don up and down, can't keep the accusation from his voice. "I've been eating."

Don stares at Charlie, then blinks as though he's just caught up with the conversation and he's surprised by what it tells him. "No, Charlie, you think too much." Don looks away. "It's dangerous."

"You speaking from experience, bro?"

Don lifts his head as though listening to a distant voice. "You shouldn't be here, Charlie. It's a bad neighborhood to be in. Go home. Go stay with Dad."

"Why? Why is it a bad neighborhood?" Don flinches as though the question hurts him and Charlie softens his voice. "What makes it a bad neighborhood, Don? What are you trying to tell me?"

"I--" Don sways, catches himself on the hood of the SUV. "Isn't it bad enough, what's happening Friday?"

"No. You look a lot worse than Colby can account for."

Don grins, a horrible death's-head grin. "Maybe I just wear my heart on my sleeve."

Charlie braces himself against the car, afraid to move forward, afraid to back away. "No, Don. You don't. You never have, and you know it."

Don closes his eyes. "Yeah." He nods. "Yeah, I guess I don't." He draws himself up and breathes, eyes still closed, and when he finally opens them again he seems steadier. More focused. Charlie can only guess at what it costs him. "What do you want, Charlie?"

"I want to help you. Is that so hard to understand?"

Don scrubs a palm down his face. "Friday." He hesitates, and for a moment that odd look of confusion and loss haunts his features again, until he shakes his head and meets Charlie's gaze, his brown eyes intense. "It'll all be over Friday."

"You're not going to make it until Friday, Don. Look at you. You look like you wouldn't last until an ambulance gets here."

"I'll make it to Friday. I have to."

"Are you interrogating him?"

Don laughs, harsh and bitter. "God, no. And let him play me again?"

"Then why do you have to be there?"

"Charlie, we all have to be there--me, Megan, David. So we can see the fruits of our stupidity."

Don's voice is so full of anger and pain that Charlie wavers. Maybe David's right. Maybe Don's decline has a simple explanation. "And then what?"

Don sighs. "Whatever you want, Charlie. Whatever you want. Please. Just go home until Friday."

"You'll take time off? You'll go see a doctor?"

"All of it." Don moves toward the car door but Charlie steps forward and Don recoils.

"You'll come and stay with us for a while?"

"Whatever you want."

Charlie stares at his brother, suddenly very conscious of Don's lie about last Saturday. A precedent has been set. "Friday's certainly shaping up to be one hell of a day."

"Yeah." The word comes out strained, and Don stares at him. Charlie can see his brother's throat working. "Look, buddy, no matter what happens, I need you to remember one thing. Can you do that for me?"

Charlie nods.

"The fault's in me, Charlie; the fault's in me. Remember that."

Charlie shakes his head, suddenly angry. Is this why Don is killing himself? "So you trusted Colby when you shouldn't have. Maybe that's a fault for big, bad, FBI agent, but I don't see that as a fault in my brother. In fact, if you're talking about my brother, trust is something I'm glad to see in him."

Don smiles then, and for the first time that evening the expression on his face is gentle and real. "Not wisely but too well, huh." He raises a hand as though to reach for Charlie, then closes it into a fist and lets it drop. "A lot of things I do that way," he says. "Too many."

"Don--"

"Friday, Charlie. After Friday I'll do whatever you want."

This time, when Don opens the car door, Charlie doesn't stop him.

Charlie goes back to his own car and waits for his brother to pull out. Two minutes later, he follows.

Five minutes after that, he gets the first text message.

QED

Charlie took the stairs, knowing even as he hauled open the fire door that four flights up to Don's floor were a delaying tactic, nothing more. Echoes of his footsteps on concrete chased him upwards; when he poked his head out of the stairwell the corridor toward Don's apartment stretched out before him like a gauntlet. The faint strains of some sitcom theme song told him the building needed better soundproofing. The worn, ugly carpet told him the building needed someone who gave a damn. No wonder Don came home most nights--

Charlie faltered, then forced himself through the heavy door and let it swing closed behind him with a pneumatic hiss.

The talk with Don last night had worried him. Don's appearance had worried him. Don's insistence that he back away until after Colby's interrogation had worried him. The bizarre text messages had worried him.

Yet somehow it wasn't until after he talked to Dr. Bradford that the worry changed to fear.

Charlie paused in front of Don's apartment, one fist raised to knock, and leaned his forehead against the door. The hell with Megan and David. He wanted his brother. He wanted to figure out what was happening the same way he figured out all the scary things in life, the things that math wouldn't touch--with Don's help. But Don wouldn't--couldn't--help him, and it remained to be seen whether Charlie could help Don.

Memories of his conversation with Bradford sharp in his mind, Charlie let his fist come down.

INCIDENT 3: INDIRECT PROOF

Charlie feels silly. He has no business calling Dr. Bradford; there are rules, privacy laws. There's the prospect of an angry brother. There's common sense.

But Charlie's more worried than silly, worried enough to punch in every digit of the number for Bradford's practice. He stares at it on the readout for a moment, then presses "Send." He wants to hear Bradford tell him he's being silly. He wants to hear Bradford tell him Don's exhausted, Don's overworked, Don's a little down, but really, Don will be fine.

"City of Angels Behavioral Health. May I help you?" A sweet voice, vaguely familiar, and for the life of him Charlie can't put a face to it.

"I need to speak to Dr. Bradford."

"I'm sorry, he's with a patient right now. May I take a message?"

"Please--it's urgent. It's about one of his patients. I'll hold. I'll call back. Just tell me when. Please."

The crack of static, a faint hum--or maybe that's Charlie's blood in his ears. "What's your name?"

"Charlie Eppes. This is about my brother, Don."

"Please hold, Mr. Eppes. I'll find out when Dr. Bradford can speak with you."

Muzak flows over the line, some horrible piano, and Charlie finds himself wishing for the sweet sounds of his brother playing one of their mother's compositions. Everything about Don hurts right now.

"Mr. Eppes?"

He doesn't correct her. "Yes?"

"Give me your contact number. Dr. Bradford will call back in ten minutes. And please stay by the phone; he very much wants to speak with you."

Charlie complies, thanks her, hangs up. Tries not to second-guess the taut urgency he heard in the receptionist's voice. But he no longer believes Bradford will reassure him.

When Charlie's cell phone rings, it's sitting on his palm and he's staring at the clock readout, counting breaths. He hasn't been able to think of a better way to pass the time. Eleven minutes, thirty-two seconds since he hung up. One hundred and seventy-seven breaths, total, for a mean of fifteen point four breaths per minute, though the median is more like seventeen point seven, which indicates that his respiratory rate is increasing--

"Charlie, how are you?" Bradford's voice is warm but reserved.

Charlie tries to calm his breathing. "I'm fine. I--I need to talk to you, though. About Don."

"I'm Don's therapist, Charlie. I'm not sure what I can tell you without betraying a confidence."

Charlie frowns, rubs at his forehead. "Wait. You called me. Your receptionist said you 'very much' wanted to speak with me. Why, if you can't tell me anything?"

Bradford clears his throat. "Linda said you seemed upset."

"What else?"

Silence, long enough for Charlie to tell that his respiration's increasing again. But he holds out.

"I was hoping to find out from you how your brother's doing. He's--ah--missed a few appointments."

Charlie bites down on a curse. "How many?"

"Charlie--"

"Please." Charlie pushes himself to his feet and keeps moving, pacing the length of the chalkboard. "Something is very wrong with him, Dr. Bradford. Something--traumatic happened at work and a few days ago he cut himself off completely from Dad and me, but I have the feeling it started earlier and circumstances kept me from realizing what was going on. That's all I know. Now, please. Talk to me."

"Hang on." Bradford sighs. "Let me pull his file. It'll have a note of when his last appointment was scheduled."

Charlie stares out the window as he listens to Bradford rummage in a file cabinet. The lawn fronting the math building is almost empty; it's Thursday. Tomorrow is Friday. Reason enough to hit Happy Hour somewhere.

"What do you mean by traumatic experience?" Bradford asks.

Charlie hesitates, then shrugs. "You've got doctor-patient privilege to worry about? I've got national security."

A non-committal grunt. "According to this file, Don hasn't been in for--" Bradford stops.

"For what?"

"Wait a minute." Charlie hears Bradford's indistinct rumble, then sweet tones of the receptionist, and he turns from the window in sudden foreboding. "Charlie, this national security issue you're talking about here. Does it concern your brother's mental health?"

"Only in how the issue affected him." Charlie sinks onto the windowsill, feels cool glass at his back. "Why?"

"Because I think someone has been in his records."

"You think? Are you sure?" Charlie's suddenly much colder than the glass would account for.

"I can't be sure, Charlie, but I know how I organize my files. Linda knows how I organize my files. She was out on vacation last week and the temp who replaced her might have done something, but your brother wasn't in. There was no reason for her to touch anything." Bradford sounds angry, but his voice is controlled and quiet, as though he's afraid someone is listening. "Charlie, if you know what this is all about, you need to tell Don."

"But I don't," Charlie whispers. This isn't really about Don, is it? It's about Colby, Colby's betrayal, and what it's done to Don. Right? Because otherwise Don is in trouble. Charlie's suddenly very afraid of the kind of trouble Don might be in.

QED

Charlie's knuckles rapped against the wood, startlingly sharp. No answer. "Don?" No sound. He knocked harder. "Don, I know you're in there. I saw you go in. Talk to me, please. Answer the door."

Nothing.

Charlie fished the apartment key from his pocket and clenched it in his fist for the time it took him to drag in one deep breath. Then he unlocked the door and swung it open into darkness. "Don?" He closed his eyes, searching for sound--a rustling from the bedroom, the whisper of the shower, but all he heard was his own voice. He slipped inside, closed the door behind him, and fumbled for the entryway light. It pushed the shadows back, but not far enough.

He moved deeper into the apartment, turning on every light he found. The living room was empty. The kitchen was empty. The bathroom--empty. The spare room, the bedroom--

Don was gone.

Charlie had watched Don come into the apartment complex. He'd watched a light go on in Don's apartment. Don had not come back out past him, and yet--Don was gone.

Numb, Charlie wandered back out into the living room and sank to the floor next to the couch. Don was gone. The words sounded final in his head. Suddenly, Charlie knew that the curve of Don's life, that steady, solid Don-function, had broken. His brother wasn't heading for a discontinuity--he'd hit it. Charlie had lost him.

Huddled on the floor, his head pillowed on a couch cushion, Charlie thought about functions. One input is worked upon to yield one output. One x gives one y. What was Don's input now? And what would be the result?

2.71828182845 2.71828182845 2.71828182845

Iago paused in the middle of writing up his notes, his fingers twitching restlessly on the keyboard. The last session, the last fucking session, and now it was time to release his final weapon into the world to perform its function. He tried to decide how he felt. Not that he was the subject he was supposed to be evaluating, but what he'd done during the last two weeks had driven him farther and farther from any feeling, any emotions, and he found himself curious about his own mental state.

What did he feel? Anything at all?

His fingers twitched again, and Iago nodded. He felt one thing. He felt glad Raymond had actually given him a computer. Of course it wasn't networked, but he'd managed to steal a flash drive himself.

"What do you think?"

Iago jerked and the cursor skidded across the screen. "Damn it."

Raymond sat down next to him and held out a steaming mug of coffee. "I'm not the one who wants to know, Iago. Will this work?"

Iago carefully pulled shaking hands from the keyboard and reached for the offering. "This has proven to be a lot more complicated than twisting the burnout cases I dealt with before."

Raymond pulled back slightly. His boyish face was still smooth and unlined; his blue eyes were still clear. "Will this work?"

Oh, good. I still feel hate. "I've done what I can and I believe the chances are good--at least eighty percent."

"Too bad we can't get that brother of his in to calculate them."

Iago nodded and grabbed the mug. "Too bad."

Raymond watched him as he sipped at it greedily. "What was that with the text messages? Did you ever discover what they meant?"

Iago lowered the mug and frowned thoughtfully. "No, I never did." Agent Eppes had been interrogated somewhat--forcefully--regarding the meaning of the four-digit number he'd repeatedly sent to his brother, but hadn't even seemed to realize he'd sent it. Iago shrugged. "According to your surveillance, the professor never figured it out, right?"

"Not as far as we can tell. He's suspicious, though."

"The other two agents are still satisfied with job-related depression, right?"

"Still, you should have--"

Iago shook his head and set the mug down on the table next to him with a bit too much force. Raymond's eyes narrowed. Careful here, careful... "No marks, remember? And I had to get him focused on tomorrow morn--crap. This morning." Iago smiled his best reassuring, duplicitous smile. "Don't worry. Even if the professor figures out something, it's too late. You know how tight security will be at the FBI."

Raymond rubbed his jaw, and Iago saw a hint of exhaustion on the All-American Boy's face. "You're right." He stood, clapped Iago on the shoulder. Iago did not flinch. He was getting good at not flinching. "The boys are almost done cleaning up. When the drop-off team gets back I'm ordering everyone to get some shuteye. We're going to be busy in a few hours."

"I need to finish my notes." Iago smiled a little, thinking of himself surrounded by sleeping goons, and him with a flash drive tucked in his sock.

"All right. Probably shouldn't have brought you that coffee, huh. Just leave the laptop on my desk when you're done," said Raymond.

Iago nodded, already turning away.

"By the way--"

"What, Agent Raymond?"

"Forget what the number means. How the hell was he able to send it at all?"

Iago found his own puzzlement in complete accord with Raymond's. "I don't know. Something about his relationship with his brother left this avenue open to Eppes."

"I thought you were supposed to be breaking his relationships."

Iago turned back to the agent, suddenly tired. Or--or disappointed? No. Sad. "I have been, but I've had very little time in which to do it. I've had to use what was already there. Eppes had quite an unusual upbringing...he has trust issues, abandonment issues. In most cases these issues were quite sufficient."

"But with his brother?"

Iago stared back at the screen, the type a black blur on white. "He still has trust issues, but where his brother is concerned, Agent Eppes does not trust himself."


	6. Chapter 6

Time to answer a few questions. Disclaimers and spoiler warnings still apply.

**E is for Enemy, Part 6**

Colby Granger is dreaming again. The real pisser is that he knows it, too. Megan once told him (Megan, you left Megan) that if you know you're dreaming, you can control it. Lucid dreams, she called them.

He would dearly love to control this dream, but he can't.

Colby is standing thigh-deep in the water of a small, shallow river, fly rod in one hand. He knows exactly where he is. Even when he is, to a close approximation. He's on--no, make that in the Clearwater River, standing about five feet off the southern bank, at his very favorite steelhead fishing spot just west of Myrtle Beach.

That takes care of the where. As for the when--

Low, gray clouds are covering the narrow valley and sometimes spitting snow--small, dry flakes that blow about and dance on top of the water. He sees snow behind him on the bank, black and slushy where it climbs up toward Highway 12, thin and patchy on the hills above. Ice rims the rocks at the water's edge. But the Clearwater is a tough, shallow, fast-moving little river, and it never ices over completely.

So, say late December. Probably more like January or February. Prime steelhead season. Except why does he have his fly fishing rig for this time of year? That's what he'd use in September, for the smaller fish, the first fish back in the river.

And where are his waders? He's out in the middle of the river with no waders. No wonder he's--

Colby looks down at himself. Scratch that. No waders, no overalls, no coat--just Army-issue t-shirt and ACU pants, heavy and sodden against his legs, and he notices that the urban camo works surprisingly well here in the desolation of midwinter. He's not sure what he's wearing on his feet. He can't feel his feet.

Colby has never been so cold.

Except in the other dreams.

A drift boat floats by with one of his interrogators--Dumb, or maybe Dumber--at the rudder and one other guy whose face he can't see fishing off the opposite side, but Colby can see the shades slung around the back of his neck and he knows it's Dwayne. "Can I come in, yet?" he yells. "I'm freezing my ass off out here."

The interrogator shakes his head. He's dressed in a big, puffy, urban camo down coat. North Face, Colby thinks. He looks cozy. "Negative on that, Granger. One more fish. We need one more fish."

Colby looks back toward the bank, and this time he sees a stringer with three good-sized steelhead--all over fifteen pounds, easy--their sides blooming blood-red against the gray of the stones, the white of the roiling water. "I'm done for the day," he yells back. "Three's the limit."

"You expect me to believe that?" asks a new voice. Don.

Colby forces himself to turn around and face the fury of his team leader. "The way I see it, you got a team, you got to trust them," he says through chattering teeth.

"I don't have a team anymore," Don snarls. He spits in the water and steam flashes up, but too far away for Colby to feel any warmth. He sighs. He's so cold he'd take even Don's anger if it could bring a little feeling back to his numb hands, his frozen lips.

"Just shut up and get that last fish." Dumb or Dumber is back.

"Whatever you say." Colby whips the rod back. The fly sails over his head and he blinks at it. It's nothing more than a tiny black speck at the end of the line. Not something he ever kept in his tackle box, that's for sure.

It's the Chinese bug.

Colby rolls his eyes. He's always considered himself a deeper thinker than most people give him credit for, but if this dream gets any more obvious he'll be forced to fully embrace his Idaho redneck origins.

He tests the rod and groans. This cast is not going to be a nice, light, flick of the wrist. His wrist is frozen into one solid bar. Nothing for it except to haul back his arm and give a good overhand fling.

The Chinese bug arcs over his head and floats gently down into the drift boat like a black snowflake. It lands in Dwayne's lap and Colby groans. Dwayne's going to put up a hell of a fight, if Colby can even set the sucker.

Colby braces himself and yanks.

Dwayne's hands go up to his mouth and he bellows in rage. He stumbles backwards, the aluminum hull of the small boat booming under his feet. Colby reels him in. Dwayne falls backward out of the boat, twisting in the air to give Colby one last look at his face before he hits the river. Water fountains up, more water than the little river even holds, and Colby only has time to think Dwayne's dead, before the wave swamps him.

"Rise and shine, Granger."

Colby bolted upright on his bunk like he was breaching a wave and gasped for breath. Slowly the gray of the rocks turned into the gray of his cell, and the white of foaming water into his cheap, scratchy blanket. But the cold stayed.

The guard (Dumb or Dumber--they were all Dumb or Dumber) eyed him through the bars. "The sleep of the just, I see," he said cheerfully.

Colby glared.

"Big day today, huh. Gonna go see your FBI buddies--"

They're not my buddies anymore. 

"--except they're probably not your buddies anymore, so maybe it ain't such a big day, huh."

Colby gritted his teeth. He threw the blanket back and swung his legs off the bunk. He tried not to show how reluctant he was to set his feet on the cold cement. Cold. Everything was so damned cold.

"Guess what? After breakfast, you get an extra shower. Maybe it'll keep you from stinking up that nice FBI interrogation room. How do you think you'll smell to your FBI buddies now, Granger? Me, I'm getting used to the stench of spies on my block, but you're probably gonna smell pretty ripe to them, aren't you?"

Colby stared at the floor. He'd learned the hard way what would happen if he opened his mouth. Maybe being cold all the time wasn't so bad. The words just slid off his frozen skin.

"Get dressed. I'll be back in five with your breakfast."

Colby huddled on the bunk and listened to the guard's receding steps. When he was sure the man was gone, he wrapped his arms around himself and slumped sideways onto the bunk until the crappy blanket scratched his cheek. Back to the FBI.

Colby almost believed that if Megan gave him one more smile, or David clapped him on the shoulder, or Don nodded grudging approval, this horrible cold inside him would ease. His team--

Sure, he'd been a member of a team in Afghanistan. Probably the most important team of his life. He'd made friends there, too, some better than others. But with Don and David and Megan, Colby had belonged to a team and still been himself. Still been human. They'd made him human again.

He suddenly realized he was more afraid of his ex-teammates than of the long years in jail that stretched beyond. And all for what? These dreams--one night trapped naked in a chairlift at Brundage during a blizzard, the next camping up the Lochsa in a freezing rain with no gear--he knew what they meant, but he could no more control his life than he could control his dreams.

Colby Granger wanted to come in from the cold, but no one would let him.

2.718281828459 2.718281828459 2.718281828459 2.718281828459

Charlie stared at the four-digit number scrawled in the exact center of his otherwise-pristine chalkboard and tightened his grip on the piece of chalk in his hand. Or was it a four-digit number? Maybe it was two two-digit numbers, or four one-digit numbers, or one one-digit number and one three-digit number.

He didn't know.

He'd factored and fussed and translated and changed bases and Googled and geometered and decomposed and diagrammed--

And failed.

Charlie still had no idea what the number Don messaged him meant.

With a hoarse cry he slammed the chalk into the board. It shattered against four integers, an explosion of shards and dust, leaving smudges that held just as much meaning as the numbers they defaced. Charlie sank down at his desk and dropped his face into his hands.

"Charlie?" Gentle fingers touched his shoulder. "What's wrong?"

Charlie jerked up to find Amita staring at him, concern evident in the set of her mouth, her furrowed brow. He blinked. His eyes felt full of grit, his tongue thick, his throat clogged. He peered past her at the window; Charlie's office was on the west side of the building, but he could still see the morning sunlight that poured over the building and into the quad below. He'd been in his office fighting with that damned number all night.

He cleared his throat. "It--it's Don. There's something wrong. I know that much. But I don't know what, and I don't know what he wants me to do, or even if he wants me to do anything, and he's been incessantly sending me a text message of four digits that I can't figure out, and how can Don send me a number I don't understand--"

"Charlie, slow down." Amita's hand slipped from his shoulder to his wrist, and he noticed that he was rubbing his hands together compulsively. He forced them between his knees. She pulled a chair around to sit close to him, and he closed his eyes as he caught the scent of her hair; usually so familiar and comforting, at that moment the delicate hint of lavender only threw the morning into a kind of surreal relief. "Start from the beginning."

"I don't even know where the beginning is."

"Then start where it began for you."

Charlie blinked at her and managed a faint smile. Sometimes, what impressed him the most about her was not her beauty and not her brilliance, but her ability to inject a much-needed shot of common sense into the proceedings. "My beginning." He raised clasped hands to his lips and stared over them at the chalkboard, then had to force himself to look away, to remember that the answer was not in that damned number. "Okay, my beginning was--was probably Saturday."

"When Don didn't make it to the barbecue."

Charlie nodded.

"But Charlie, Don has missed a lot of family get-togethers. He's always begging off because of his job."

"But he either tells us flat out that he's not going to make it, or he explains why afterwards," Charlie said. "Besides, his entire team was there. What's left of them, anyway."

Amita looked away.

"I'm sorry." Charlie sighed. "Look, Don hasn't been around since--since what happened with Colby, but at least we kept in contact. I made it a point to call him every day. But Saturday was like--flipping a switch. Shutting a door. He stopped answering my calls, wouldn't even respond to emails. I finally ambushed him in the FBI parking garage on Wednesday." He briefly recounted their conversation. "And not ten minutes after he left, I got the first text message." He looked at the number on the board. Amita followed his gaze.

"He sent you that?"

Charlie pulled his phone from his jacket pocket, flipped it open, and laid it down on the desk. "Time after time after time. I have no idea what it means."

She drew the phone toward herself with one finger, as though unnerved by it. "So the number doesn't ring a bell?"

"What do you mean?"

"It doesn't remind you of anything from your childhood? Anything you and Don shared?"

"No." Charlie shot her an irritated glance. "Do you really think I would have been here all night if that had been our super-secret code for 'You forgot to take out the garbage and boy, you're in trouble now'?"

She matched him, glare for glare. "You said it yourself. How can Don send you a number you don't understand?"

"He's not stupid."

"Of course not, Charlie. But you have to admit--numbers are your gig. Besides, if Don's really sending you a message, don't you think he'd pick one you could understand?"

Charlie pushed himself to his feet and turned away. She was right. Once again, he was failing to comprehend his brother. Instead, he was focusing on a number. He studied the board again but let his vision blur until the digits were merely indistinct shapes. Something nagged at his memory--some childhood game...

Charlie turned back to the desk. Amita was scrolling through the saved text messages, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. Charlie positioned himself on the opposite side of the desk, held out his hand, and closed his eyes. "Amita, please hand me the phone. And don't change its orientation. Just pick it up off the desk and set it directly in my hand."

He heard her gasp, but she did as he asked. It took him a moment to steel himself, to open his eyes and read what he already knew was there. He slowly set the phone down on the desk, heedless of the way Amita snatched it up. "Help," he whispered.

"Charlie, it's not a code, it's a word, an upside-down word." Amita sounded far too excited. Nothing like the numbness Charlie could feel spreading through him. "Four is 'h', three is 'e', seven is 'l', and six is a--a backwords 'p.' It says--"

"Help," Charlie said again, louder. He sank into his desk chair. Don had asked him--been begging him for help since Wednesday and he'd not only completely missed it, he'd refused to see it. He'd looked at a number and been incapable of seeing anything else. "He needs my help."

Amita looked uncertainly from the phone to Charlie. "He did say that tonight he'd be willing to see you. Maybe you can find out then."

"No." Charlie shifted restlessly. He looked up into her dark eyes. "I--I'm afraid tonight will be too late."

Amita toyed with the phone before snapping it shut and shoving it away. "But you don't know," she said softly.

"I don't know. And Don, Megan, and David all made it very clear that I won't be able to just waltz into the FBI offices today. I need something solid to go on and all I have is a cry for help."

"Do you think it might have something to do with Colby's interrogation today?"

"It might." He leaned back, forefinger to his lips. "But Don said Wednesday that he was to essentially be an observer today."

Amita nudged him with her foot. "According to you, Don said a lot of things Wednesday, some of which didn't make much sense."

Charlie snorted. "Oh, yes. Though he only threw me one complete non sequitur. When he first saw me he said, 'Yond Cassius.' I have no idea what he was thinking."

"Apparently about Shakespeare." Amita straightened, tossing her hair back. "Shakespeare, or Bacon? Does this have something to do with Ashby again?"

"I wouldn't be surprised, but when I asked if he thought I looked lean and hungry, he dropped it."

"Dropped it? What do you mean?"

Charlie eyed her, then squinted, thinking back. His memory for words wasn't as good as his memory for numbers, but it was still very, very good. "He didn't continue with the topic. He just told me I think too much and that it's dangerous."

Amita froze. "Charlie, that is on topic. It's paraphrased, but that's the rest of the quote."

"You're kidding."

Amita pulled Charlie's laptop to her and typed. A moment later, she cleared her throat. "'Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,'" she read quietly. "'He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.' Julius Caesar."

"I know what play that's from," Charlie snapped. Julius Caesar... Something--something hovered on the edge of his consciousness. He shook himself, and it was gone. "What the hell is Don doing quoting Shakespeare?"

"Or Bacon--"

Charlie shook his head impatiently.

"Can you identify any other quotations?"

"I wouldn't know a Shakespeare quote if it jumped up and bit me."

Amita sighed. "Just one work of fiction a year, that's all I ask--"

"Amita, now is not the time."

She nodded. "You're right. I'm sorry. Was there anything else he said that sounded off to you, based simply on the words?"

Charlie frowned. He closed his eyes and concentrated, calling up a mental picture of the garage, with its yellow-gray light and endless echoes. "There was one thing--he told me to remember, whatever happened, that it was his fault. But he didn't say his fault. He said the fault was in him."

"The fault is in--" Amita's brow cleared and she nodded again. "'The fault, dear Brutus, is not--'"

"What?" Charlie's heart jolted painfully in his chest.

Amita stared at him. "The fault is not in our stars--"

"No, no, Brutus. Brutus." He sank back, his heart racing, a cold wave rushing through him. "Brutus," he whispered. "No. God, no."

Amita went white. "But you--Charlie, you helped catch that psychiatrist. What was his name?"

"Dryden. Lawrence Dryden."

"He's in jail now, Charlie."

"He's in government custody, and Brutus was originally a government program." He stared at Amita, then shoved himself to his feet. "Colby. It has to be about Colby."

"Why would--"

Charlie tuned her out. Brutus. He knew Brutus had been reactivated, and that--something--had been done to his brother, and that Colby was the target, in the same way he could leap past several intervening chains of logic to arrive at an answer, and then work the problem backwards to his initial conditions. How and why could be figured out later. What mattered now was stopping it. But would two Shakespeare quotes and a text message get him in to see Don?

He turned back to Amita. "Are there any quotes about wearing your heart on your sleeve or doing something not wisely but too well?"

Amita stopped, flustered. "Well, I already know the second one is from Othello--" She turned to the laptop while Charlie paced. "And so is the first one."

"And in Othello--"

"Iago tricks Othello into killing Desdemona by making him believe she's betrayed him."

Charlie nodded. "Betrayal. Colby." He grabbed his bag. "I have to get down there. Call Megan, call David. Keep trying. If that doesn't work call the main number and try to get somebody--anybody--to listen to you."

She grabbed his arm as he hurried past. "Charlie, why don't you call? This could be--"

He pulled away from her, and his flash of annoyance must have shown on his face because Amita turned away. "Dangerous," she said.

Charlie sighed and knelt beside her, pulling her gently around to face him. "You know what the Brutus assassins all tried to do after their assassination attempts."

Amita nodded.

"It's Don, Amita. I have to help him."

She nodded again, and kissed him. "Go. Hurry. Be safe."

Charlie gave Amita's hand one last squeeze and turned to the door. And please, he thought, let me not be too late.


	7. Chapter 7

A few more episode references: Backscatter, Pandora's Box, Undercurrents.

School starts tomorrow. I don't know what the workload will be yet, but--I can't go much slower with this, let me tell you.

**E is for Enemy, Part 7**

Megan arrived at the FBI offices on Friday morning to a lobby full of annoyed agents. A floor's worth of annoyed agents, to be precise, most of whom she recognized. She stopped, yanked her earbuds from her ears, and stared at the line of people snaking away from the receptionist's desk. The receptionist, Stan, normally greeted the world with an admirable air of unflappable cheer, but this morning he looked harried and miserable as he dealt with each agent in turn. Most of the agents continued on to the bank of elevators, but some--the ones Megan recognized--backed away from Stan with disgusted looks. Some turned around and left, while others milled about uncertainly.

Megan took a detour to a security guard at the entrance. "What's going on?"

"What floor do you work on?" The guard--Paula, according to her nametag--looked just as disgusted as everyone else.

"Fifth."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, you're going to have to wait down here until the all-clear is given."

Great. Just what I need. Megan sighed. "The all-clear for what?"

"I suggest you contact your team leader, ma'am."

Megan locked eyes with the guard for a moment before she realized the sort of challenge she was issuing and stepped back with another sigh. She was tired, she was hungry, she needed caffeine, she desperately wanted this misery to come to an end. The guard was not the person to take it out on. "I think I'll do that, Paula," she said as she retrieved her phone and dialed.

A shrill ringing pulled her around. Don and David were standing together next to a conversational grouping of overstuffed leather armchairs. Don already had his phone in his hand, peering down at it. "Don, it's me," Megan called, and he jerked his head up to scan the lobby, twitched like a horse under a cloud of flies when David touched his shoulder and pointed. God, he looked horrible, but then he always looked horrible now, and the clean morning sun pouring in through the exterior windows only made him look worse.

David raised a hand in greeting as she approached. He didn't look so hot either, though where Don looked physically ill, David merely looked tired and defeated. For a moment Megan emerged from her own anger, her own defeat, and felt a familiar flash of concern for these men. Her friends. Don and David were not the people to take this out on, either.

Megan glanced at the elevators. Her sudden burst of fellow feeling didn't change the fact that she was still hungry, she still needed coffee. Who should she take this out on? "What's going on?"

Don hooked his phone back on his belt and stared at the floor. His eyes looked dead. "AD Wright called me this morning. There's been a change of plans." His voice didn't sound any better.

"Change of plans?"

Don remained silent and David glanced at him. "Apparently the AD received word of the possibility of an ambush."

"Colby?" Megan heard her voice rise, but she didn't care.

"Yeah. The floor's being swept as we speak. And then--" David faltered, looked at Don again.

"What? Then what?"

"The floor will be locked down. The interrogation is to be conducted with a skeleton crew. Colby's US Marshal escort to provide security on the floor and--" Don looked up. "Us."

"Us?" Megan gaped at him. David stared out the windows.

Don kept looking at her through his dead eyes and a part of Megan whispered to her that Don and a flat affect did not go together, but a bigger part thought of interrogating Colby and wanted to retch. "Dwayne Carter intended to sell a fourth name," Don said. "They decided they couldn't take a chance with the interrogation team they put together. We know Colby, we know the cases--"

"'They'? Who's this 'they'? Can't 'they' change the venue? Postpone the interrogation? Don, this is seriously messed up." Megan did not want to take this out on Colby. She was afraid of how easy that might prove to be.

"I know, Megan." Don's throat worked as he looked away. "Believe me," he said in that same dead voice. "It's not my idea."

2.718281828459 2.718281828459 2.718281828459 2.718281828459

Eyes forward, face blank, hands clasped at the waist. Heavy chains making his biceps burn. Strides so short he needed to take two for each step taken by the marshal escorting him so that he was almost jogging, a funny, bouncy little stride that made the chains feel even heavier. The shackle shuffle, Colby thought. Not a step that was likely to go over on Line Dancing Night at any of the cowboy bars he used to frequent in college, so long ago.

Funny how he was thinking more about home now the prison walls had tightened around him.

"That's the Fed?"

"Pretty boy, ain't you, Fed."

"Sooner or later they're gonna hand you to us and you're gonna be everybody's bitch, Fed."

Eyes front. Face blank. Don't think about the future. Colby hated himself for feeling grateful that he'd had his own cell, showered alone, eaten alone. But as the weeks since his arrest had passed with no word from his handler, no answer to the phone calls he placed to a certain untraceable cell phone number, Colby had begun to fear that the catcalling inmates were right. He was looking at having his service to his country rewarded by a long prison stay among an inmate population that would not appreciate the fact he had already sacrificed himself for his country.

Maybe someone would take pity on him and at least send him home--to the ICI in Orofino, maybe, or a military brig at Fairchild. Air Force, but he should get something for his trouble, and Fairchild AFB was not only the closest to home, it was least likely to put him in a position where his FBI service was--ah--held against him. Besides, now that he'd lost all his friends, being near family would be nice. Unless they believed him capable of all the same crap his so-called friends had believed him capable of. In that case they'd probably disown him.

Colby wished he understood why. Why was he being hung out to dry like this? Did the desk jockeys running this op expect him to take another crack at Dwayne Carter? Colby had already chosen his response to his own Prisoner's Dilemma, and that had been to make sure Dwayne stayed in custody. He couldn't imagine Dwayne ever trusting him with the time of day again, let alone the one name he hadn't sold to Ashby.

And yet--what else could be going on? Colby hadn't seen Dwayne since the night of his arrest--perhaps Dwayne was being given a chance to cool off.

What other explanation could there be?

Colby shuffled along, eyes front, face blank.

In his dream, Dwayne had been dead. Premonition, or wishful thinking? Either way, he could find no guilt in his heart. True, Dwayne had once been his friend. True, Dwayne had once saved his life. But Dwayne had also turned that life into a hell on Earth.

You said yes, Colby reminded himself. You took up this duty. The knowledge didn't stop Colby from thinking that if Dwayne were dead, he could lay this duty right back down.

Two marshals hustled him quickly toward the bus, while six more, all taller than Colby, encircled them. He didn't bother trying to catch the attention of any of them; he'd been on the other end of prisoner transport, he'd worn the dark sunglasses that precluded any eye contact, he'd perfected the art of the smoothly passing glance that let a prisoner know he was an object, not a human being.

The bus ride to the FBI building passed all too quickly. Colby distracted himself from the brief glimpses of everyday life visible through the bars by debating his strategy. As the bus pulled up to the prisoner transfer dock, he shrugged. He had to consider himself still under orders not to divulge his motives, but he may as well tell the truth about his transactions with the Chinese. He doubted he would be believed, and even if he was, there was little chance of anyone not in the know putting together all the pieces. But at least he would be on record as having sold only information that was obsolete, useless, or just plain wrong.

The chains hobbling his feet were barely long enough to let him descend from the bus without tripping. A hand caught him as he stumbled, and he might have muttered thanks if the hand hadn't just as efficiently shoved him forward after he regained his footing. Colby squinted in the sun, bright after weeks of artificial light, but as they entered the basement he would have willingly turned back, no matter how much the light hurt his eyes.

And then they were in the elevator. Colby's chest tightened. He could feel his pulse pounding in his throat, his ears. Were they here? Would he see them? Would they be standing before the elevator door as it opened? He saw a sudden vision of all three of them in dark glasses, their faces impassive, their gazes sliding smoothly over him.

The elevator jolted to a stop and Colby swallowed, resisting the urge to close his eyes. The doors opened onto an empty, silent foyer. The two marshals flanking him grabbed his upper arms and marched him out, while the other six spread out behind them. Colby ignored them, his attention instead captured by the absolute quiet. The only sounds were his shuffling feet, the rattling of his shackles, the soft footfalls of the marshals. The reek of old coffee was the only indication that anyone might be on the floor.

What the hell? Colby had wondered why he was coming back to the FBI for questioning in the first place, why they didn't just send interrogators to the prison--was it to humiliate him? Better to parade him in front of as many ex-coworkers as possible for that. Finding the entire floor shut down simply unnerved him.

The marshals escorted him toward the interrogation rooms, and Colby saw three people through the glass.

He swallowed against rising bile as he studied Don, Megan, and David. Megan sat at the table while David hovered above her, both peering down at something--probably his list of crimes. Don stood facing away from them, his arms crossed, his head down. Their slumped shoulders and drawn faces all spoke of exhaustion and defeat. None of them looked up, though they had to know he was coming.

The second chair in the room, across from Megan, was empty. Colby knew he'd be sitting in it soon enough.

The marshal to Colby's left moved forward and pushed open the swinging door. Colby shuffled in after, stealing glances at his (ex)friends and (ex)teammates.

Megan and David ignored him. Don approached the lead marshal while the second man shoved Colby toward the chair and grabbed his wrists.

"Wait."

The marshals looked up in surprise as Don pulled his cuffs out and gestured at Colby.

"Sir--"

"There are only three of us here. We're not going to send somebody running after you whenever he wants a drink of water."

The marshals exchanged a glance. Don held up his cuffs. "We've got him," he said.

The lead marshal nodded, and the second man shrugged and reached for a key. Colby tried to catch Don's eye as his wrists were released, but Don wouldn't look at him as he grabbed Colby's left arm and snapped a cuff around his wrist.

Instead, Colby got a good look at Don.

His (ex)team leader looked like death--and not even warmed over. Pulled straight out of the freezer was more like it. Colby had honestly seen better-looking corpses. Colby jerked back and looked at both Megan and David, no longer trying to hide his scrutiny. Neither looked as bad as Don, but David had an ashy undertone to his skin while Megan's lips were pinched to a thin, angry line.

Megan slammed the folder they'd been studying closed as Don snapped the other cuff to a bolt in the table and Colby jumped. Megan got up without a word and followed Don to the door. Don held the door open while first the marshals, then Megan walked out. She still hadn't looked at Colby. Don, though...Don turned to him, dark eyes burning in his white face. A muscle in his jaw jumped. Then Don left too, pulling the door closed behind him.

Leaving Colby alone with David.

Colby turned. David had straightened and was now staring at Colby, one corner of his mouth curled up as though he were studying a dead rat floating in a sewer.

"Good to see you, too, David," Colby said.

David's lips tightened. He slammed a hand against the table and leaned forward, towering over Colby. "You do not address me as 'David,'" he said in a quiet, precise voice. "I am either 'Special Agent Sinclair,' or 'Sir.' Is that clear?"

"Yes," Colby whispered.

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, sir."

David stepped back. "Good. If you continue to behave yourself, we can get this over with."

Colby sighed and let his head drop back, missing the warmth of his cell. "I'm willing to answer all of your questions but one," he said. David waited a beat, and leaned forward again. "Special Agent Sinclair."

"All my questions but one?" David frowned, then his eyes widened. "Why?" he whispered.

Colby shook his head. "You don't need to know. Not to make your case. Sir."

David jerked back and looked away. Colby wondered at Don's decision to have David start the questioning by himself. He wasn't going to last long at this rate. Colby felt like apologizing. This, more than anything else, told him how hard David had been hit by his arrest.

David spun the folder around on the table and shoved it at Colby. "Just look through this list and tell us what you sold, so I can get out here. I really don't want to look at you any longer than I have to."

Colby stared at David, eyebrows raised, and bit back a retort. Play the part, play the part. "All right," he said, but despite everything, his hand shook as he opened the folder. It contained a list of all the cases he'd worked with Don, David, and Megan.

A pen landed on the table next to him. "Initial every case you sold."

Colby sighed. Too bad he hadn't really been in this to get rich, but the truth was he'd passed on very little information about his own cases. Most of the information had been too sensitive and hadn't been approved. Would David believe that, though? Would anyone?

Colby fidgeted with the pen while he scanned the list, trying to buy time to figure out his next move. Despite himself, several of the cases jumped out. Oh, yeah. The girls in the container. Who had included that one? It was worthless. The Chinese government wouldn't care if some of their excess girls were dumped in the US. That look on David's face in the strip club had been priceless, though...

Colby cleared his throat and kept looking.

The software that hid plane transponders. Now that would have been worth a lot of money. He could have retired to Coeur d'Alene on that one alone. David shifted restlessly, and Colby kept looking.

The Russian mob case. What could he have sold from that? Colby supposed that the Chinese might want information on how to hack into US bank accounts. He might even have been able to sell this info, since internet security breaches were generally plugged soon after exposure so the information itself would have had a very short shelf life. He hadn't thought of it at the time, though. All he'd really been able to think about was the image of David going down with a bullet in his shoulder, the pain on David's face, Don's strong, steady voice, commanding David to breathe--

"I thought you were willing to answer questions."

Colby looked up at David. His fingers tightened around the pen. "I guess I'm just overwhelmed by the warmth of the reception."

David's mouth dropped open, then snapped shut again. His eyes narrowed. "Well, what did you expect?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe one 'Colby, sorry about all this' in honor of all the times I saved your ass."

David leaned over, both palms flat against the table. "I'm not the one who thinks somebody saving my ass makes me his dog."

"No, you've got no gratitude at all."

"Gratitude?" David jerked back like he'd been slapped. "Is that what you think I should be feeling here? Man, the next time I'll feel grateful is when you get a needle in your arm."

Colby gasped. "David--"

David straightened, his eyes wild. He shook his head. "No, man. No. That's not what I meant--"

David bolted for the door.

Colby could hear Megan's voice as the door swung slowly shut behind David. "--I told you this was stupid, Don--" He saw David through the window, probably heading for the break room, Megan in pursuit. Colby let his head fall to the table. He didn't hear the door open again. What he heard was an indrawn, shuddering breath.

Colby looked up, straight into the white face and tormented eyes of Don Eppes. Then Don moved, and Colby saw the Glock.

"Don?" Colby swallowed, suddenly understanding what cold really meant. "Don, what's this about?"

"I do not want this," Don whispered. He closed his eyes and grimaced, shaking his head, but Colby could see that Don's gun was settled snugly in his right hand, his left supporting it, feet spread in a classic shooter's stance. Right now the gun still pointed at the floor. Colby knew it was up to him to keep it there.

"Then--then don't do it, Don." Colby looked past Don, but the windows remained empty, and the significance of the empty floor, the skeleton crew of marshals hit him in the gut. He'd been set up. He'd even played into it by mouthing off to David and driving him from the room. But how had they gotten to Don? "You don't have to do anything you don't want to."

Don staggered back one step, then two, until his shoulders hit glass. Every muscle was tensed, every sinew stood out, as though his body had been ratcheted to the breaking point. He slammed his head into the window and Colby cried out at the sound. Don staggered a little but kept his feet as the gun swept up toward Colby. Don aimed. "I do not want this."

"Don--no--"

Don fired.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimers still apply. References to "Rampage" and "In Plain Sight." This fic is turning into a walk down Memory Lane.

**E is for Enemy, Part 8**

Squealing breaks and a strident horn brought Charlie back to the present, and with a muffled oath he stepped on the gas long enough to finish a left turn whose signal had already hit red. Trying to ignore the sudden shakiness in his limbs, Charlie flipped his cell phone shut and threw it into the passenger seat. This was his second near-miss. He could no longer risk the continuing distraction.

Not that he'd been getting anywhere. Of course, Don's, Megan's and David's trifecta of cell phones were switched off, and they weren't answering their desk phones, either. Nor, to Charlie's surprise, did anyone pick up any of the bullpen extensions he dialed.

It was as though the entire fifth floor of the FBI building had vanished.

Larry would probably cite Wheeler and DeWitt. Charlie could hear him: If time is not real, Charles, there's no reason to believe we must all labor under the same illusion. Some affront to the fabric of the cosmos, a catastrophic local increase in entropy, could very well send the fifth floor of the FBI building spinning off into its own reference frame.

Charlie thought about Brutus, and what Brutus actually meant--Don, tortured. He choked on his brother's name, half laugh, half sob. Some affront to the fabric of the cosmos. A catastrophic local increase in entropy. That would certainly explain how his world had suddenly become several orders of magnitude more senseless than even a week ago.

The garage was closed to visitor parking, forcing Charlie to hunt for a spot on the street. He climbed from his car and studied the FBI building, trying to determine his next move. The runaround he'd gotten on the phone and now the barriers in front of the garage were disturbing indications of how tight security was for Colby's interrogation.

Charlie slapped the roof of the car in frustration. This should be simple. He had vital information concerning the interrogation of an--an enemy agent, and he should be able to walk in, demand to see whoever was in charge, and get Don the hell out of there. But--

Brutus belonged to the United States Government. Charlie did not consider it a vast intellectual leap to believe that whichever member of the United States Intelligence Community wanted Colby dead would guard against the possibility of Professor Charles Edward Eppes interfering in the attainment of their objective. Especially since they were using his brother to do it.

Charlie stared at the building and realized he had no idea who he could trust.

Not that Charlie expected a massive conspiracy, with scores of shadowy spies ready to take him out the instant he stepped into the lobby. No, Charlie expected orders: orders designed to prevent interference, orders from far enough up the chain of command that they would be followed without question by an entire building full of brave, honorable, trustworthy agents.

Charlie realized he needed to restate the problem. He didn't need to find an agent he could trust--he needed to find an agent who trusted him.

Charlie pulled out his cell phone and dialed. "Could you connect me with Agent Paul Romero, in Crimes Against Children?"

Ever since the Libby Lamberg case, Charlie had kept in touch with Romero, helping out where he could--mostly with image enhancement and data mining algorithms. He wasn't as close to Romero's team as he was to Don's, but he knew that his work had resulted in some solid improvements to identification methods. He hoped Romero would take that into account when considering the favor Charlie was about to ask, because Charlie had the feeling it was a pretty damned big favor.

Two rings, three... "Romero here."

Charlie sagged against the side of the Prius and held the phone more tightly to his ear. "Paul, look, it's Charlie. Got a minute to talk?"

"Sure, Charlie. It's a little crazy here right now, but I've always got a few minutes for you. What's up?"

Charlie hesitated. "Are you at your desk? I'd rather not do this over the phone."

"Sure, but why don't I meet you in the lobby? You're going to have a hell of a time getting up here today."

Charlie kept the tone of his voice one of bland interest. "Really? What's up?"

"Don didn't tell you?" Romero sounded surprised. When he spoke again, a note of uncertainty had crept into his voice. "Look, Charlie, if Don didn't say anything to you, I'd probably better not either. You know how it goes."

Charlie sighed. "Meet me on the pedestrian bridge. We need to talk."

"This isn't about your data mining algorithms, is it."

"Five minutes, Paul."

There was an answering sigh. "Five minutes."

"Thank you," Charlie said quietly. Then, risk be damned, he added. "No. It's not about my data mining algorithms. It's far more important than that."

Romero grunted in response and hung up. Charlie shoved his phone in his pocket and fumbled for his ID badge to reassure himself of its presence, then trotted toward the office park adjacent to the FBI building. It boasted a coffee shop and a deli on the ground floor, as well as the other end of the pedestrian bridge, accessible from the mezzanine level. Charlie tried to slow down, tried to calm down, tried to reason himself down. The morning was still fresh, and Don had been quite adamant that he would not interrogate Colby himself--it would be tough for Don to get access, to get a clear shot. Charlie had time.

Who are you kidding? It would be tough for Don to get access if Don cared about coming out of this alive.

Charlie broke into a run.

He forced himself to slow as he approached the entrance to the pedestrian bridge. Romero hadn't yet arrived, but Charlie could see the guard stationed at the door into the FBI building. He felt like he was standing on one side of a No Man's Land, waiting for his contact. Had Taylor Ashby ever been in this position? Charlie shook his head. A more realistic question was how many times? And what had been the stakes?

Romero appeared at the far end of the bridge and stopped to let the guard examine his ID. Then he walked briskly forward and Charlie left the security of the doorway to meet him. With his sober gray suit and short dark hair, he seemed cut from the same cloth as Don.

Charlie stopped in the center of the walkway and turned to lean against the railing. He was facing the back of the building now, with no one below, and no one else on the bridge. He should be trying to think like Don and isolate security cameras, places he could be trapped, routes he could use for escape, but Charlie was not Don and right now making sure they were not overheard would have to be enough.

"What's this about, Charlie?" Romero could obviously read Charlie's intent from his posture; the agent leaned against the railing next to him and spoke quietly.

Charlie took a deep breath. "I need to get up to the fifth floor."

Romero frowned and shook his head. "So you do know it's off-limits today. Then you'll know I can't help you."

"Yes, I know it's off-limits today. I know it's off-limits because of Colby Granger's interrogation. I also know something you may not." Charlie chose his words carefully. "There's a probable threat against Granger's life. I need to get up there, and I need to get up there now."

Romero glanced at him sharply. "How did you--never mind." He looked down again, his frown deepening. "Charlie, you don't want access to the fifth floor. You want access to AD Wright."

"No." Charlie jerked his head up and looked quickly from side to side. The walkway was still clear, but the guard watched him curiously and he cleared his throat before speaking again in a quieter voice. "I don't know that I can trust him. This threat against Granger comes from the inside."

"What?" Romero straightened and stared down at him. Charlie resisted the urge to grab the agent's sleeve and tug him back down. Instead, he gripped the railing and stared down at the pavement below. Romero finally blew out a long breath. "This would certainly explain the morning's rumors."

Charlie stood to face Romero. "Rumors? What rumors?" His voice shook, but he no longer cared.

Romero eyed him curiously. "That the interrogation team and Bureau reps who were supposed to take point on this got called back when they hit O'Hare. Right now, as far as anybody can tell, the only people on the fifth floor are your brother, his team, Granger, and his escort."

Charlie stared at Romero. The meaning of the agent's words seeped into him like ice water into his veins. "I'm out of time," he said.

Romero put a hand on his arm. "Charlie, why doesn't that news make you feel better? What else do you know?"

Charlie stared out over the back parking lot and scrubbed his hands together. "I need to get to the fifth floor."

"Charlie--" Romero stepped back as his eyes widened in shock. "You think the hit's coming from your brother's team." He grabbed Charlie by the arm. "Come on."

"Are you taking me to the fifth floor?"

"No, I am not taking you to the fifth floor, Charlie. You are a civilian. What the hell are you going to do up there? I'm taking you back to my desk and you are going to sit tight while I figure out what to do." Romero's resemblance to Don had never been more unwelcome.

Charlie dug his ID from his pocket and clipped it on while Romero vouched for him with a quick word to the guard. Then Romero tugged him inside and the two men hurried toward the elevators. Charlie tried to decide whether to push the agent harder because, really, Romero's desk was a suboptimal location. "Paul--"

Romero was flipping open his cell and didn't even look around. "No."

Charlie's mouth snapped shut. He shoved his free hand through his hair while he tried to consider options.

Waiting at Romero's desk was not one of them.

Letting Romero park him somewhere on the third floor and then sneaking away was an option, but--Charlie shook his head--time. Time was the dominant factor, both known and unknown. Had Colby even arrived yet? How long after he arrived before Don would feel compelled to act?

No, the only viable course of action was to proceed directly to the fifth floor.

Charlie shook himself out of his reverie as Romero, still talking in a low, urgent voice, steered him toward the elevators. The agent let go only long enough to jab the "up" button. Charlie swallowed. Once they got on that elevator, all he had to do was push the button for the fifth floor. He just had to go through Agent Romero to do it. His eyes flicked down to Romero's sidearm--a standard-issue Glock, just like the one Don used. If Charlie tried something in the elevator, what were the chances of Romero actually drawing--

A name flashed into Charlie's mind.

Alex Shane.

A soft bell announced the arrival of the elevator, and Charlie swallowed again as Romero pocketed his phone and tugged Charlie inside. No one else joined them. Charlie almost wished someone had; another body would have removed an option he wasn't sure he wanted. He pulled in a deep, desperate breath and thought of what he'd risked for Ashby.

By the logic of blood and love, Charlie knew he would risk even more for Don.

Romero stepped forward to hit the button for the third floor, leaving his back to Charlie, who shifted to stand more squarely behind him. Romero took one step back, and Charlie's entire existence became the black, blocky, slightly pebbled grip of the gun at the agent's waist.

Moving faster than he'd believed possible, Charlie simultaneously ripped the gun from its holster and yanked Romero backward by the collar, throwing him off balance. Romero flailed and landed heavily against Charlie, who braced himself against the back wall of the elevator and took the agent's weight. He jammed the barrel of the gun into Romero's ribs, a little appalled by how easily thought was translating into action. Maybe he really did hang around Don too much.

The indicator light for the second floor lit up, went out. "Push five," said Charlie.

"Charlie, what the hell--"

Charlie gave Romero a shake, then slacked up on his grip and crowded the agent forward a step. "Push five."

Romero did so, and Charlie jerked backwards again, once more throwing him off balance. A constraint problem, that's all. How best to constrain the agent's motion--

The doors slid open on the third floor and Charlie didn't have to say a word. Romero was the one who yelled at the group of startled agents to keep back. It took a long time for the door to close again. He'd have to talk to Larry about how long it took.

Only two more floors, but his hands were starting to shake. Don't think. Don't think.

No. Think of Don.

Romero's voice faded in over the roaring in Charlie's ears as the indicator light for the fourth floor lit up, went out. "--arlie, Charlie, this is stupid and you're not a stupid man. We can talk about this."

"I told you I needed to get to the fifth floor," Charlie snapped. He felt absurdly peeved.

Romero gasped. "You don't think the hit is coming from Don's team. You think the hit is coming from Don."

A quiet bell, a gentle bump, a glowing number, and Charlie braced himself. As soon the doors were wide enough to admit a Romero-width body, he yelled, "Unarmed hostage coming out," and shoved. Romero stumbled forward and Charlie followed, hands up, still yelling.

"Don!" Charlie scanned the floor for his brother. He was vaguely aware of a startled-looking marshal yelling at him to drop his weapon and get down on the floor, but that term was not in his expression, so he ignored it. Instead, he saw both David and Megan standing outside the break room, staring at him open-mouthed.

Megan started toward him. "Charlie, what the hell do you think--"

"Megan! David! Where's Don? You have to get Don away from Colby!"

"Drop the gun and get on your knees!"

Then, in a lovely example of simultaneity, three things happened at once:

The marshal tackled him, sending him face-first to the floor;

He cried, "Brutus, Megan, Brutus," and saw her stop, her eyes widening in surprise;

The wall of the interrogation room exploded outward in a shower of flying glass.

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As Colby felt glass splinters pepper his shoulders, he decided he could wait until later to be surprised that Don hadn't shot him. Right now, his best response was still sheer terror. He dove to the side, swearing as the cuff prevented him from crawling any further under the table. "Megan! David!" he bellowed. "Get me out of here!"

The voice that answered was completely unexpected. "Colby! It's Brutus! They've used Brutus on Don!"

Charlie? Brutus?

Colby risked a quick glance over the table, and what he saw made him stop, then slowly stand.

Don wasn't aiming anywhere near him anymore. Don was staring at the gun cradled in his hands, face slack, throat working. He looked up at Colby and his eyes widened for an instant, then slowly closed--in relief, Colby thought. That didn't make any sense...

Brutus. An image flashed through Colby's mind, of the Vietnamese assassin Van Min, sprawled against the broken hotel table and lifting a gun to his head.

Before him, Don echoed the gesture.

"Don--no!" David cried out from behind him. Too far behind him.

Colby planted both palms on the table and vaulted over it, straightening his body as he slid across. The soles of his feet slammed into Don's stomach, throwing him against the glass of the far wall. The second shot went high, and Don's hand hit the glass with an audible crack, jarring the gun from his grip. It clattered to the floor, far out of the reach of Colby, who was stretched out painfully over the table trying to regain his footing.

"David--"

"I got him, man."

"Watch the glass--"

"I've got him." David clapped Colby on the shoulder as he rounded the table and advanced slowly on their team leader, hands up in a calming gesture. Behind him Colby could hear Megan ordering someone named Paul to call for an ambulance as she followed David inside. "Don. Don, man, it's over. Let us help you."

Don barely seemed to notice the big agent. Instead, he stood with legs spread wide, shaking his head slowly back and forth. He looked at his gun hand and frowned, as though surprised the Glock wasn't there, then blinked and peered at the floor.

"Don!"

Colby looked around and groaned. Charlie was standing in the corridor beyond the shattered wall, framed by jagged chunks of glass, one hand stretched out toward his brother.

Don's head jerked up and he froze. "Charlie?"

"Friday's over, Don," Charlie said softly. "You promised to go home with me when Friday was over."

Don raised both hands to his face. Shudders wracked him.

"Charlie," said Megan quietly, "I think you'd better back off--"

"It's time to go home, Don. You promised."

"Charlie, get away from me!" Don dove for the gun, but David met him in mid-air, driving a shoulder into his ribs. Glass sprayed out in a wake as both men skidded across the floor and behind the table, out of Colby's sight, followed by Megan's cursing and Charlie's agonized cry.

Megan shot past Colby on the other side of the table to meet the two men as they slid to a stop. For a moment Colby could only hear harsh gasps, a weird moaning that seemed to be coming from both Don and Charlie, and Megan's tense voice: "Drop the glass, Don...drop it--"

Then Megan reeled back, a hand to her face, and Charlie backpedaled almost to the other side of the corridor. Colby flung himself onto the table. From his new vantage point he could see David struggling to pull Don's body out of the glass. Don thrashed against him.

"Stop fighting--" David gasped. "Megan!"

"Megan, let me help," cried Colby. She stopped, turned to study him with narrowed eyes. Blood trickled from a cut on her cheekbone. "He didn't shoot me." Colby strained toward her, tugging on the cuff. "He gave everything he had not to shoot me."

"Megan--" Don jerked and bucked in David's arms.

Megan tossed Colby her handcuff key.

Fumbling in his haste, Colby finally managed to unlock the cuff and release his wrist. He dragged himself across the top of the table and dropped to the floor beside his teammates in a rattle of chains. David just glanced at him. "Grab his legs. We have to get him out of this glass."

"You too," murmured Colby, as he wrapped his arms around two thrashing legs and hugged them to his side. He could see that both David and Don were badly cut, with splotches of blood dotting their chests and faces, but Don-- He had a nasty gouge in his left arm, and blood dripped steadily from his right hand.

Don jerked and fought, but the three of them managed to carry him to relatively clear spot on the other side of the table.

"Hold him," Megan commanded. She stripped off her jacket, knelt, and swept it across the floor. "That should be most of the splinters," she said, shoving it away. "Let him down."

Colby and David eased their team leader gently to the floor, Megan reaching up to cradle Don's head. As he was settled on the floor, he finally went limp, his only sign of life the rise and fall of his chest and the harsh rasp of his breathing.

David cleared his throat. "Stay on his legs," he said to Colby. At least Colby thought the words were directed at him. David couldn't seem to meet his eyes. "You're big and dumb. You should be able to handle that."

"Yeah. I can handle that."

"Where are the medics?" Megan swiped at the trickle of blood on her cheek with her shoulder.

"Where are the marshals?"

"Still at their posts." David almost looked at him. "They're terrified that if they don't guard every point of ingress some ninja band is going to swoop in and clean up this mess."

"Will someone?"

"Will someone what, Colby?" Megan sounded very tired.

"Swoop in and clean up this mess."

Megan and David exchanged a glance. Then she looked up at the video camera in the corner. She tucked her chin and spoke in a voice so low that Colby had to strain to hear her. "I would think that if they--whoever 'they' are--can just blame all this on a crazed shooter, they'll let it go." Megan glanced down at Don, who, while still quiescent, had started muttering to himself. The red of the blood against the white of his skin made a startling contrast, and Colby had to turn away.

"But we know better," he muttered. "And I'm still alive."

"Yeah." David sounded almost sympathetic. "He didn't shoot you, huh?"

"He pulled it at the last second. I thought that was going to be enough to kill him right there--"

Colby heard a small sound and looked up to see Charlie standing over them, staring at Don's face. Ah, crap. "Hey, Charlie, good going there."

Charlie blinked. "What?"

"You know, you probably saved his life. If you hadn't yelled 'Brutus' I'd still be cowering under the table. Good work, Charlie."

Charlie shook himself and met Colby's eyes. "Really?"

"Swear to god."

Charlie pulled in a deep breath and let it out, some of the unnatural stiffness in his shoulders and jaw leaving with it. He dropped to his knees next to his brother's head. "Really," he whispered, and Colby smiled.

"You don't know the half of it," Megan said ruefully.

"Yeah? Wiz Kid come in with guns blazing?"

Megan glanced at Charlie, but the young man's focus was wholly on his brother. "I'll--I'll tell you about it later."

Later. There might be a later. Colby kept smiling. As he turned to adjust his grip, he caught David watching him. This time, David didn't look away. "Good job yourself, man."

"All this glass," Charlie said suddenly. He hesitantly brushed his fingers across the top of Don's head. Don stirred. "In his hair, his clothes. Shouldn't we--"

"I think we're going to have to let the pros deal with that, Charlie," said Megan. "We need to make sure he doesn't hurt himself anymore."

"Yes--" Charlie brushed at Don's hair again. "I suppose you're right."

"Charlie?" The words were weak, but clear.

Charlie dropped to his elbows and huddled next to Don, face inches from his brother's. "Right here, Donnie. You're going to be okay."

Don shook his head and Colby tensed, but Don seemed too weak to fight any longer.

"Charlie, you shouldn't be here, it's not safe, I'm not safe--"

"Yes, you are." Charlie's voice sounded oddly reasonable. "You're safe now, because I'm not going to let anyone hurt you anymore." Don's eyes slid closed again and Charlie nodded. "That's it. You just rest now."

Colby swallowed against the sudden tightness in his throat. He could tell that nothing existed for Charlie at that instant except his brother, but somehow that moment between them still seemed too private to intrude upon.

A rattling gurney announced the arrival of the paramedics, led by an agent Colby recognized as Paul Romero. So that was how Charlie got in. Gurney wheels crunched over broken glass as they pulled to a stop outside the interrogation room. One of the paramedics, a stocky woman with a blonde buzz cut and a disgusted expression, surveyed the scene.

"You're going to have to clear out if you want us to work on him. We've already wasted enough time getting searched." She glared at Romero, who shrugged.

"He's been--combative," Megan said. "And he's a suicide risk."

"Good to know. Now move."

Colby gratefully accepted David's help up, staggering just a little as the room tilted around him, then settled.

"You okay, man?"

"Yeah." He watched Megan pull Charlie gently from his brother's side. The medics swooped in. "It's just--already been a really long day."

"I hear you."

They stopped outside the room where Charlie could watch Don and Colby took the opportunity to sag against the glass while David pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the blood from his face. Megan nodded her thanks to Romero, who shot Charlie an odd look.

"Later, Paul, please."

"Don't get me wrong, Megan, I sympathize with what he was doing, but his actions--"

"Saved his brother's life."

Colby eyed the little mathematician, who paid no attention to the conversation. Charlie's nose was plastered to the glass as he watched the medics work on Don. "What did Charlie do?" Colby whispered to David.

"Later, man."

"Look," said Megan. "Charlie's not going anywhere except with Don. Can't this wait?"

Romero shook his head, but in frustration, not argument. "All right. If he stays in your custody." Megan tightened her arm around Charlie's shoulders and nodded. Romero stalked off, leaving the four of them alone. David and Megan exchanged a look.

"Brutus," said David.

"Brutus," Megan echoed. They both looked at Colby, who sighed. He'd been waiting for this.

"Brutus is ours, as distasteful as that may be," Megan said. "Any idea why the good guys would want to use something like Brutus to get rid of a bad guy they've already legitimately taken into custody?"

Colby looked at the floor. He couldn't look at David and Megan, at the faces of his friends, at everything he'd given up. He'd spill his guts, he knew he would. "I don't know."

"Five generations," Megan said quietly, and Colby jerked his head up in surprise. She squeezed his arm. "We'll talk about this--"

"Later, yeah, I know."

"Megan, they're getting ready to transport Don," Charlie said suddenly. "I have to go."

All three agents looked at Charlie in surprise. He'd been so quiet, so focused on his brother, that he'd been almost invisible. "Okay, Charlie, I just need to get something straight with David--"

Without another word, Charlie pulled away from the group and trotted after the gurney.

They watched him leave. "What I don't understand is how we missed what was happening to Don," David said.

"Yeah." Megan chewed a thumbnail. "I don't get it either." They exchanged another look, and Colby felt his chest tighten.

"I'll take Colby and you take Don and Charlie," David said quietly.

"Deal."

"Wait a minute." Colby raised a hand in protest. "You can't really be thinking what I think you're thinking--"

"Colby." Megan grabbed his shoulders and pulled him around to face her. "No matter what you have or haven't done, what's happened here--to you, to Don--is wrong. I spent six weeks in Washington waist-deep in this kind of crap and I'm not going to put up with it any longer."

Colby studied Megan's face. She looked strong, resolute--she looked fierce. She also looked a lot more alive than when he'd walked into the interrogation room that morning. He nodded. "Yeah. Okay. If you're sure."

"I'm sure." She let go of his shoulders and stepped back.

Colby looked at David. "What's your excuse?"

David grinned. "You still owe me a six-pack of beer."


	9. Chapter 9

Oh, gosh. Which new episode do I pull from in this chapter? I think "One Hour" is it. Other than that, all previous disclaimers apply.

**E is for Enemy, Part 9**

"Keep your head down," grumbled David.

Colby glanced at him, shifted uncomfortably in the ill-fitting marshal's uniform, and compromised by tugging the bill of his cap further over his eyes.

"That's not what I told you to do."

"The car has smoked windows," Colby, said, his voice tightening. "Nobody's going to see in."

David gripped the wheel. Funny. He'd have sworn he couldn't get any more tense. "Except traffic cameras."

"And my face will be completely unrecognizable."

"Until they hand the video to Charlie."

"Charlie's going to be a little busy," Colby snapped, then winced. "Aww, hell. That sounded--I didn't mean it to sound--"

At least, thought David, he has the grace to look ashamed.

Colby pulled the bill of the cap even lower and leaned forward as far as his seat belt would allow. He prodded at the glove compartment, which was locked. "What do you suppose is in here?"

"I don't know," David burst out. "Gum. Jesus, Colby, will you chill?"

"I still can't believe you took Don's car."

"Well, my jeep would have been a little conspicuous, don't you think?"

Colby peered out the windshield, and David allowed himself a few quick peeks away from the road at their surroundings. They were climbing and the air was already noticeably clearer, the houses bigger, the security walls higher. "Not around here, really," Colby said, his voice trailing off. He looked at David, who faced front and kept his eyes resolutely on the road ahead, though he could feel Colby's speculative gaze. "David? Man, please tell me we're not going where I think we're going."

"We're going to Chez Lobo, to see your gangbanger boyfriend. We need supplies. And a different car."

Colby recoiled. "Man, we can't go to Santiago. Everything we get from him will either be hot or bought with dirty money."

David choked. "You are unbelievable." He didn't even bother to glare at his ex-partner. All he could do was shake his head. The adrenalin from that nightmare scene with Don had long since drained away; even his and Megan's end run around Colby's escort had gone so smoothly that he was left with more of a sense of a job well done than a sense of, "I am now a fugitive from the law." He sighed. That would come, he knew, but right now he was tired, his face stung from all the cuts, and the annoying little jabs he felt when shifting his hands on the wheel told him he still had glass splinters to deal with. If Colby made too many more stupid remarks, David would lose the anger he'd been using to keep himself together and start laughing. And if he started laughing, he wasn't sure he could stop. "You are fucking unbelievable. Just tell yourself that we're taking the dirty money and cleaning it by putting it to better use." At least I hope that's what we're doing.

Colby frowned and shook his head. "I don't know about that situational ethics stuff, David. Doing what I need to do to catch a perp is one thing, but to save my own neck?"

Oh. This was good. This was useful. David's hands tightened on the wheel, and he didn't feel a single twinge. All he felt was a fresh infusion of anger. "What kind of crap is that, Granger? You've been lying to us for the last two years while you ran around playing your little spy games."

"I had my orders," Colby shot back, then pulled away with a quick indrawn breath and turned to face front. David stole a glance at him. Colby's hands were clamped on his legs, his eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Orders from who?" asked David softly. "Some Red Army colonel? Or one of ours?"

Colby's fingers dug more deeply into his thighs.

"I guess it doesn't matter, because either way it just means you're letting someone else define your situation for you. And the situation they want to see is you, dead. You gonna take that, Granger? Or are you going to step up to the plate and start creating a situation of your very own?"

After a long silence, Colby sighed. "Che Lobo is not my boyfriend."

"Bullshit. That man obviously has the hots for you."

Colby chuckled. Another silence, much more relaxed. Almost familiar, David thought, as he concentrated on driving. He needed to concentrate more now, because for some reason his eyes were starting to sting.

Colby took a deep breath. "Look, man," he said, and David could feel him turn. "I want you to know that I'm really--"

"Don't say it."

"What?"

David could hear the surprise. He could even hear an undertone of hurt. But David couldn't look at Colby; he still had driving to do, plans to make, a fugitive to keep safe. "Don't say it now, man. If you do I'd have to think seriously about forgiving you, and I'm not ready to do that just yet."

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Despite her promise to David and her own intentions, Megan didn't get to Cedars-Sinai for almost five hours. Convincing Travers, the US Marshal in charge of Colby's escort, to send half the men with Don as a precaution was easy enough, and sending most of the remaining men down to check the loading dock while the prison bus was brought around was a piece of cake. The fact that David picked one Colby-sized marshal to help hustle Colby down the stairwell didn't seem to register with any of them. They are going to hate the FBI for the rest of their natural born days, Megan had thought as she'd exchanged one last glance with Colby and David before hurrying after Charlie.

Or so she'd intended. Then she'd stopped to think. Then she'd made a few phone calls and hunted down a few techs. By the time Megan was ready to leave, Colby and David's disappearance had been discovered and she wasn't going anywhere.

After a relatively quick three hours of questions, including forty-five minutes with AD Wright himself, Megan was finally turned loose, followed by thinly veiled threats involving the interrogation team still awaiting orders in Chicago. She stopped at her desk to pick up her purse and nodded in grim satisfactions: not only was Don's desk already stripped of everything that wasn't bolted down, her and David's computers had been confiscated, too.

The only bit of electronic equipment left to Megan was the cell phone she dug out of her purse. It held a series of increasingly desperate messages from Charlie, one apologetic message from a Krav Maga student with the flu, and one message from her buddy Corrine at the Metropolitan Detention Center that made her stiffen and look about for too-curious glances. The floor had been repopulated during her questioning, but none of the other agents would look at her. Megan shoved her phone back into her purse without trying to call Charlie and made her escape.

Cedars-Sinai wasn't far and Megan desperately wanted to know how Don was doing, but she also found herself wishing for more time to contemplate Corrine's news. Corrine was a kung fu practitioner Megan had met during a retreat for women martial artists. She was also a guard in the woman's facility at MDC-LA who always somehow seemed to know what was going on, women's side and men's side.

And Corrine said Dwayne Carter was dead. Orders messed up, taken out of solitary, dumped in the exercise yard with the rest of the boys, knifed in the gut.

"Be safe, David," she whispered. Then, not as grudgingly as she'd expected, she added, "Be safe, Colby."

Charlie called again while she was navigating the parking garage under the North Tower. His words fuzzed in and out, but his feelings were clear. "--you been, Megan? It's been"--buzz, hiss--hours!"

Megan sighed. "I'll be right there, Charlie. I'm parking now."

"...psych ward--"

Megan slammed on the brakes. "He's not in the Trauma Center?" Damn. She should move to the parking garage across the street.

"No," yelled Charlie in a burst of good reception. "They're waiting for a new set of tox screens. There are drugs in his blood that they--they don't--"

"Charlie," Megan said. He was breaking up again, but this time it wasn't the reception. "I'll be there in ten."

"They won't let us see him," Charlie said, voice frantic. "We make him too agitated. He's already in restraints. What did that bastard Dryden do?"

"I'll be there in five, Charlie. Sit tight."

By the time she found parking and tracked Don's room number down, it was more like twenty. When she walked onto the ward, her first sight was of Charlie, slumped in a corner of an overstuffed waiting room couch, elbows on knees, face in hands. It gave her time to scan the room. She saw Wolcott and Hsu and sighed in relief. At least any pissed-off marshals had been swapped out for two of their own. Wolcott nodded and Hsu gave her a lopsided smile. She nodded back before walking over to Charlie.

"Charlie. What can you tell me?"

Charlie jerked his head up and peered at her. "Megan," he said hoarsely. Now that guns weren't waving around and glass wasn't flying, Megan took the opportunity to examine Charlie more closely and make a few educated guesses. Based on his bloodshot eyes and the dark stubble that stood out so starkly against his pale skin, Charlie hadn't slept. Charlie probably hadn't eaten. Charlie, when he'd had actions to take and a brother to watch out for, had been able to focus his considerable mental powers on the problem at hand; now he was barred from Don and cut adrift, his thoughts either going in a million different directions or imploding in on themselves. Charlie was running on fumes.

She sat next to him and lowered her voice comfortingly. "I'm sorry I was gone so long, Charlie. I was the only witness left to give a statement." She left out David's and Colby's disappearance and her own questioning. And she certainly wasn't going to tell him yet about Carter. She could hit him with those later. "Don't worry about Paul--he's a bit upset, but he knows why you did what you did." Minor fib. Romero was more than a bit upset, but when Megan finished with him he'd be buying Charlie lunch.

"Paul?" Charlie said faintly.

"Romero." Charlie was farther gone than she thought. Time to get him to focus again. "Where's Alan?"

"Dad? He's with--" Charlie stopped, blinked again, and his eyes narrowed. That's it, Charlie, pull it together. He straightened and took a deep breath. "He couldn't stand to be stuck here and not able to see Don. He went over to the cafeteria in the South Tower for a while. I can call him--"

"No, that's okay. I wanted to talk to you. You were saying something about tox screens and psych wards?"

Charlie scrubbed his hands together and stared blindly at the linoleum tiles. "He's staying here until they figure out what drugs he's been given. After that--"

"You told them about the dextroamphetimines that Dryden used before?"

"That's already been identified, though not how it was administered. But there's something else, Megan," Charlie said. One hand went to his forehead. "Something they don't recognize. Maybe an experimental drug--anyway," Charlie said and sighed. He rubbed his forehead, squinting as though the waiting room lights hurt his eyes, then looked away. "What did that bastard do to him?" he asked again. "He kept yelling at me to keep away, to go home to Dad, that he wasn't safe. Then when Dad walked in, he--" Charlie turned to Megan, exhaustion sharpening the despair on his face. "He screamed, Megan. He just screamed."

"Charlie." Megan put an arm around his shoulder and squeezed, buying time to think of something comforting to say. "We'll find out what happened to him, I promise. And once we do, we'll know how to help him."

Charlie remained silent for several moments before glancing up at the other two agents. "It's going to be tough," he said quietly. Megan stared at him before giving herself a little shake. Of course Charlie understood the significance of Brutus. Not only was he a genius, he was a pretty smart guy. Unlike other geniuses she could name... Megan shook herself again. Charlie wasn't the only one running on fumes.

"I don't care who we're up against," she said, just as quietly. "I'm not letting the people who did this to your brother get away with it."

Charlie smiled then, a tiny quirk at the corners of his mouth. It only made him look more tired. "I'm in."

"After you get some sleep. What are we waiting for now, by the way?"

"What else? Another lab report from Dr. Kim." His smile, such as it was, disappeared. "They aren't even sedating him. They're afraid of drug interactions. They're just giving him a lot of fluids to flush out his system and praying he'll fall asleep on his own. And--" his voice dropped to a stricken whisper-- "I can't help him."

"Charlie, Colby's right. He's alive because of you."

Megan's phone rang. She dug it from her purse and glanced at the readout. She didn't recognize the number, but-- "Charlie, I have to take this. Sit tight. I'll be right back." She stood and moved away. The waiting room was empty save for their little group, but it was visiting hours. Why sit in a waiting room when you can be with your loved one?

She looked at Charlie, hunched forlornly on the couch. Except when you can't.

"Reeves here."

"Agent Reeves? Megan? Thank god."

Megan frowned. The voice itself was familiar and the relief in it was obvious, but static was playing havoc with Megan's comprehension of the words. Except the static sounded like deep rumbling and growling, and--was that a car horn?

"Megan?" The familiar voice a little shaky now. "Can you talk?"

"Stendhauser? Barb? Why are you at a payphone?"

The computer tech's voice did not get any steadier. "I've found something, Megan. I thought you should know about it immediately."

"And it's not something you felt safe calling me about from your own phone. Or even from inside the building." Megan looked first at Charlie, then at Wolcott and Hsu. Surely she could trust them.

"No, it's not." Stendhauser paused, and Megan could picture her scanning the street. How much worse was this going to get?

"I found something, Megan. First on Agent Eppes' computer, then once I knew what to look for, I found something similar on both your's and Agent Sinclair's."

"All three of us?" That startled her, but the sinking feeling in Megan's gut told her that, at least on some level, she'd expected it.

"It's a little chunk of code spliced into--get this--your wallpaper. You know--that official FBI logo in the background on your monitor. Whoever installed it messed up, though. They forgot to remove the code signature. It's from a group out of Stanford University called the Persuasive Technologies Lab."

"Persuasive Technologies?" The sinking feeling turned into a sick feeling, and Megan dropped into one of the waiting room chairs.

"Officially the group works on user interface designs that reinforce desirable behavior--a stop smoking website, user feedback systems on auction sites, stuff like that."

"But who gets to define desirable behavior?"

"Well, from what I found on Eppes' machine, not someone I'd want to meet in a dark alley."

Megan pushed her hand into her hair. "What did you find?"

"Subliminals. Your wallpaper was infected with subliminals that displayed at regular intervals." She hesitated. "I thought subliminals were debunked, though."

"Not when they reinforce an already-held position." Megan sagged forward until her elbow was propped on the arm of the chair. The sick feeling was changing to a cold wave, spreading through her. They hadn't messed with just Don. They'd messed with her and David, too. She took a deep breath. "What were the images?"

"The ones on your machine and Agent Sinclair's were pretty innocuous," said Stendhauser. "Text, mostly. 'He's sad,' or 'He's depressed,' or 'Poor Don.' Some images of crying men."

"And on Don's?"

Stendhauser hesitated again, and this time Megan didn't think she was checking for a tail. "Is--is he going to be all right?"

Oh, god. 

"Who installed this crap, Barb?"

Each silence on the other end of the line seemed longer. Megan bit her lip. Barb Stendhauser was a good tech--solid, methodical, thorough, no-nonsense. And right now, totally freaked.

"Do you think your phone is secure?"

"I think it's too late for that. You need to tell me what you know and get the hell out of that phone booth."

The next silence was much shorter. "I couldn't--I couldn't find any unauthorized downloads from our system. You know how we've been combing through the discs to make sure Granger didn't give the Chinese a back door? Security's been insane. So I looked on your machines again. You all had installers on your desktops--tiny little chunks of code that could have been beamed from handhelds. And you had emails in your inboxes."

"Barb, our emails are filtered--"

"These were from a trusted source, Megan." Stendhauser's voice dropped almost to a whisper. Megan strained to hear. "They were from the NSA. And do you remember those guys who showed up for an information-sharing session two weeks ago?"

NSA. Megan's head snapped up and she stared at Charlie, an idea already forming. "Did you make copies of the code?"

"Yes, got it right--"

"Don't say another word. Get out of there. Don't go back to work, don't go home. Take a cab. Take a bus. Take a dozen busses. Call me in four hours. With any luck, you'll be able to go home then."

"Megan, what are you going to do?"

She hadn't looked away from Charlie, and now he seemed to feel her gaze. He looked up, eyebrows raised questioningly. "Make a stink so big that us little people pale into insignificance." Not that she, personally, would be making the stink. But she knew who could. "Remember, call me in four."

Stendhauser acknowledged the instruction and hung up. Megan flipped her phone shut and pushed herself to her feet, still holding Charlie's gaze.

"Megan?" he asked uncertainly.

"Hey, Charlie. You want to do something to help Don?"

"Not even my Numbers Theory class has ever generated such an idiotic question, Megan." He smiled at her and sat straighter, obviously heartened by something in her face. Megan herself felt a twinge of uncertainty. In a way she was using him, like Dryden had tried to use Don. But she wasn't going to--to break him; if this worked it would help Charlie, give him a task that was not only vital to Don's well-being, but to their continued existence.

Besides, he was in this mess up to his neck already, and Megan would make sure he didn't sink in over his head.

"That was your computer-tech buddy Stendhauser," Megan said as she sat down next to Charlie. He leaned forward, nodding eagerly. "She found some code that--well, that has to do with what happened to Don, and she also discovered who put it there."

"Good work," Charlie said. "I owe her a new sort or something." He nudged Megan's thigh with his knee. "Well?"

Megan took a deep breath. "It came from the NSA, Charlie."

Charlie froze and Megan watched, the profiler in her fascinated by the way his thoughts visibly turned inward, his eyelids narrowing, his jaw tightening, his eyes flicking down and to the left. Dark red suffused his cheeks and she leaned backward just as he exploded from the couch, already digging for his cell phone. "Charlie," she said quietly, "be smart about this, okay?" but she'd set him loose; it was too late to worry about how far he'd go. She'd just have to trust that both the genius and the smart guy would over-rule the terrified little brother.

Charlie's hands were shaking as he dialed but his face was set in hard lines and his voice was very clear. "I need to talk to Assistant Director Tompkins--I don't care what meeting he's in. Inform the assistant director that Professor Eppes wishes to speak with him. About his brother...no, my brother--oh, he'll talk to me, I can assure you. He will, or a reporter will."

Megan joined him and placed a hand on Charlie's shoulder. He twitched it off, but not before she felt him trembling. He started to pace. "I can't believe this," he whispered.

None of us can, Charlie, Megan thought. That's how it happens. How much longer before she could slink back to her apartment for a good cry?

Charlie stopped and his head snapped up. "Shut up, Bob. I know about Brutus." Evidently that got a reaction from Tompkins, because Charlie relaxed slightly. "I said shut up. I don't want evasions and I don't want platitudes. I want just two things from you. I want a complete list of the drugs that were used on my brother, their dosages, and how often they were administered, emailed to a Dr. Gina Kim, Cedar-Sinai Hospital, within the next thirty minutes...of course you can get that list, Bob. You've got spies working for you." The sardonic tone was new to Megan, but welcome.

"Then I want Lawrence Dryden here to consult on Don's treatment. In an hour."

Megan started. This was not exactly what she'd had in mind. She advanced on Charlie, prepared to wrangle the phone from his hand, but the look of fury on his face stopped her. Tompkins was not making his case very well. "How dare you--Might I remind you that the bravest, toughest, most honorable man I know is lying in a hospital bed in restraints, because you or someone very much like you decided it would be a good idea to try to turn him into a monster? Which is more un-American, Bob? What I'm asking for, or what you already did?"

A long silence. Megan chewed her thumbnail and eyed the other two agents, but no cell phones rang.

"Yes, 'try'. It didn't work. Don didn't kill Colby."

Another silence.

"Well, that's fine, Bob," said Charlie, his voice silky despite the anger still coloring his features. "You can say 'if,' and you can say 'maybe,' and you can hedge all you want, but that's not how I'm going to play it. You get me the list and Dryden, or I will email a thousand of my closest colleagues, all over the world, and tell them this most interesting news. Let's see, how many conferences have I been to? In how many countries? How many mathematics mailing lists am I on? Not to mention the contacts I've made through my Cognitive Emergence work--lots of psychiatrists and neurophysiologists would love to hear about this--"

Charlie grinned, a frightening, triumphant grin. "I thought you'd see it my way. We'll look forward to that email. And Dryden. Oh, and Bob--make no mistake. I'll keep my mouth shut for now, but I've already planted a few packets of information out there somewhere in this big, wide world. If what I want doesn't show, or if anything happens to me, or Don, or his team, or anyone at the FBI involved in this--well, just watch the news."

Charlie pulled the phone away from his ear and gripped it tightly in a shaking hand, but when he looked at Megan his savage grin had not faded. She matched it, a heady feeling of excitement--almost euphoria--sweeping through her. "Charlie, that was perfect. Telling him you're already covered was brilliant."

He nodded, then bent over the phone. "He had to believe this is beyond their control, and in a few minutes, it will be." Charlie frowned as he tried to enter another number but his hands were still shaking, and Megan laid gentle fingers on his forearm. He looked up, his eyes glittering, and Megan saw past the triumph, past the anger, all the way to a deep hurt. He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Bob swore he didn't know what I was talking about. But he did. He did."

Megan squeezed his arm.

Charlie took a deep breath and pulled away. "Megan, I have work to do."

"At least you can sit down to do it." She turned him around and steered him toward a chair. Voices echoed down the hall, growing louder, and Megan tensed. A quick glance told her that both Wolcott and Hsu were on the alert, as well, and she allowed herself to continue propelling Charlie forward as she looked down the hall.

Alan Eppes' familiar figure appeared and she pulled in a deep breath, all ready to heave a big, relieved sigh--until she saw who was with him.

Charlie must have heard something, because he looked up at her, then down the hall. "Oh, yeah. Larry came with Dad."

Vaguely Megan was aware of Charlie moving off to collect a slump-shouldered Alan, and she even thought vague thoughts about following him so she could do her part to comfort the elder Eppes, but she couldn't seem to move. She could only look at Larry. He still looked soft, but she had to admit a bit of softness would be very welcome in her life right about now.

"Megan! You're hurt!" Larry covered the distance between them in a few quick strides and reached up to her cheek. The quick sting broke whatever spell Megan was under. She sucked in a sharp breath and pulled away. Larry snatched his hand back, his look of concern changing to one of dismay. "You're bleeding."

"Was bleeding, Larry, was. It--it's fine. I'm fine. A scratch. There was a lot of glass flying around." Why was she explaining all this to him? She nodded toward Alan, who was now sitting next to Charlie and staring dispiritedly at the piles of old Ladies' Home Journals and Time Magazines on the coffee table in front of him as Charlie whispered urgently to him. "I'm fine, really. You'd better go stay with Alan."

"I didn't come for Alan, Megan." He frowned at her, a bit impatiently, she thought. Was he scolding her? "I came for you."

"For--me?" For some reason the statement shocked her; she'd been so certain when she left Charlie's--god, was it only a week ago?--that she and Larry were through, that he had neither the nerve nor the desire to try to get her back. Megan blinked stupidly at him and felt the floor under her shift.

Larry grabbed her by the arm. "Oh, dear. Gravity is so inconvenient at times--" He steered her toward a chair of her own, away from Charlie and Alan, away from Wolcott and Hsu, then perched on the arm next to her. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders and Megan suddenly found herself fighting off an overwhelming urge to bury her face in his stomach and sob.

Larry held her more tightly. "I was at Charles' house, hoping to speak with him further concerning a--a very significant conversation we had last weekend--"

About me, Megan supplied, smiling a little at how transparent Larry was.

"--when we received word of the incident at the FBI offices. Yes, I was and remain quite worried about Don, but I was also horribly worried about you--about your safety and well-being." Larry sighed into her hair. "Considering our current circumstance, is that terribly forward of me?"

Megan slumped against him. Not that she needed a knight in shining armor, and not that Larry would ever be a knight in shining armor, but she'd hoped for a little more assertiveness. She'd already decided she no longer wanted to be the only person in their relationship who was certain she wanted the relationship to exist. "Of course not, Larry. Whatever else, we're still friends."

"Just friends?" Larry slipped a forefinger under her chin and gently pulled her face up until she met his eyes. He studied her, his expression serious but relaxed. "I'm rather more interested in the 'whatever else.' And in the interests of full disclosure, I don't intend to take no for an answer. I simply wanted to gauge your current feelings, since this will be easier if I have your cooperation."

Then he kissed her.

**A/N:** The Stanford Persuasive Technologies Lab is real, and does sound kinda scary to me, but their cooperation with the NSA and code to insert subliminals in computer wallpaper is my invention.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:** Once again, apologies for the lateness. School is really cutting into writing time, and that's not going to get better. This is a fairly long chapter, though. The next chapters should be shorter, and that will help.

All disclaimers still apply.

**E is for Enemy, Part 10**

Colby straightened in his seat as David pulled up outside of Che Lobo Santiago's estate and threw the SUV into Park. He peered through the ornate scrollwork of the wrought-iron gate, over the expanse of manicured lawn, to the gleaming white Colonial beyond. It looked neither more nor less ostentatious than any other mansion along the street, and entirely respectable. Could it really be a haven, if only for a little while? He turned to David and shook his head. "Man, I'm still not sure we should be here.

David grimaced at him. "We need stuff. He's got stuff. Besides, nobody's going to expect it."

Colby eyed his friend, mouth open to protest, when he saw David wince and ease his hands off the steering wheel. What David wasn't saying came clear--he was exhausted and in pain. He needed his cuts looked after and a chance to pull himself together. Instead of protesting further, Colby nodded. "But one of us is going to have to get out and go up to the intercom."

David slumped back in the seat and laid his head against the headrest. "Yeah. So?"

"I don't suppose you've kept track of how Organized Crime is doing on any RICO case."

"Oh. Yeah." David leaned forward and peered past Colby at the front gate. "You worried about video?"

Colby nodded.

"I doubt it's active surveillance. He's trying to stay clean for Joey, right?"

Colby nodded again, a faint smile tugging at his lips as he thought of Che Lobo's little boy. Brave kid, Joey. Colby hoped the boy was in school right now, because Colby didn't want Joey to see him like this.

"Then I'd say there's probably video, but low-priority video. Doubt it gets screened more than once a week." David slapped his shoulder. "But if you're worried, I'll go."

"Like that's going to be any safer?" Colby checked the street. One good thing about these enclaves; there were probably a lot of people outside right now--gardeners, nannies with playing kids, chauffeurs washing cars--but they were all hidden behind high, white walls. The sidewalks were empty, traffic light. He took a deep breath. "We both go," he said.

David shrugged. "You got it."

Colby watched as David pocketed the SUV's keys and checked the clip in his gun. As David reached for the door, Colby stopped him with a hand on his arm. David turned back with a questioning frown. The thoughts and emotions that had been swirling through his mind since Don had--had not shot him were starting to come clear and he almost wished they wouldn't. Colby jerked his chin toward the wrought-iron gate. "After Santiago--then what?"

David's frown softened. "One step at a time." A cut on his forehead had cracked open again and he dabbed at it with a cuff.

"Man, I hate to see you put yourself in this position--"

David fixed him with a serious gaze. "I'm looking at keeping you in one piece as my new assignment, Colby. So let's get our asses in gear or I'm not gonna get a very good write-up."

Colby pulled away. "And as soon as we figure out what's going on you hand me back?"

David froze, his eyes narrowing. Then they closed briefly, and he dropped his hand to the steering wheel. Not to his gun, Colby noticed, and was absurdly grateful. "One step at a time, man," David said. "Please."

"Okay." Colby nodded. "Let's go, then." He couldn't blame David--the man had his part to play, too. In fact, when it came to busting the bad guys, David was a lot more by-the-book than Colby himself. In some ways David's current behavior didn't make much sense.

David's words did. You gonna take that, Granger? Or are you going to step up to the plate and start creating a situation of your very own? Part of the tacit agreement between a soldier and his commanding officer was honorable treatment for honorable service. So far, Colby was the only one who had held up his end of the deal. He was starting to think that creating a situation might be an appropriate response.

The question remained: Should he create his situation on his own, or keep dragging David into it? Colby glanced at David one more time before slipping on another man's sunglasses and opening the car door. As selfish as it made him feel, he was sure glad David was with him.

As Colby climbed out of the car, the transition from cold, recirculated air to a warm breeze and the smell of new-mown grass hit him like a punch to the chest and he had to concentrate to pull in a full breath. Feeling light-headed, he reached up and slid the glasses down his nose; the slice of lawn he could see though the gate was so green it made his eyes water. He gazed up instead, at the big spruces ranked along the inside of the estate wall. They carried thick coats of needles, so dark they were almost black, and the trunks were seamed and weathered. They looked real. They looked like home.

"Colby. Shades."

Colby started and slid the glasses back up the bridge of his nose, cutting him off once more from a little taste of normal. They pinched. "I'm--it's a nice day," he said inanely.

David sighed. "Get your fix later, Nature Boy."

Colby grimaced, but David was right. Pulling down the glasses to reveal his most easily identifiable feature had not been smart. He cast a quick, guilty look at David, but his friend couldn't see through the dark lenses, anyway.

Colby strode with purposeful steps toward the gate, David right beside him, and hit the intercom button before he could think of any more reasons why he shouldn't.

"Whaddaya want?"

So much for respectability. Colby grinned at David and cleared his throat. "I want to speak to your boss. Tell him it's Co--"

He stopped. One look at David's wide eyes told him he wasn't alone in his sudden realization. Video was one thing, but the words "Colby" and "Granger" had to have been flagged. If he said his name out loud here there would be units rolling within hours.

David gave him a frantic nudge. Colby shook his head a little, a hint of panic tightening his throat.

"Well? I don't got all day."

Inspiration struck. "Dudley Do-Right." Colby blew out a long breath as David's eyes got even wider. "Tell him Dudley Do-Right needs to see him."

"Dudley Do-Right?" David mouthed it with the flunky on the other end of the line, his incredulous face matching the man's tone perfectly. Colby shrugged.

"So who's the other guy? Snidely Whiplash?"

"Naw," said Colby. He grinned at David.

"You call me Nell and I'm hauling you back to the office. You can take your chances."

"Aw, man, you know you mean more to me than that." Colby turned back to the speaker grille. "This is Horse." David glared.

"Dudley Do-Right and Horse." The flunky sounded amused. "I'll let el Jefe know."

The faint, staticky buzz from the speaker cut out, and David put his hands on his hips. "Aw, man, Horse? What about Inspector Fenwick?"

"You don't like it, you pick something."

David grinned back, and suddenly Colby felt the sunlight again, sinking through his skin, right down to his bones. Something in him loosened. Nobody better for a situation than David, he thought, and realized he'd made his decision.

"How about Mr. Peabody and Sherman?" David said. "'Cause I can totally see you as Sherman."

"While you're Peabody? Not buying it."

"Hey, man, I'll have you know history was my best subject."

"I thought ditching class and hanging out at the basketball court was your best subject."

"You have obviously not seen my transcripts."

"Hey. Dudley."

Both of them jumped.

"The boss says to tell you to get your pimped SUV in here, and he'll try to rustle up some gold chains."

David's eyebrows went up, while Colby looked elsewhere. "What else you holding out on about the time you spent bonding with Che Lobo?"

"I'll tell you later, man."

Ten minutes later Don's SUV was out of sight in the cavernous garage ("Damn cars get more square footage than I do," muttered David) and the two men were being ushered into Che Lobo Santiago's equally spacious office. But while the garage was--well--a garage, even if it did house a couple of Expeditions, a few Porsches, a Corvette, and several Harleys, the office was light and airy, with high ceilings and French doors backing Santiago's massive desk. Colby could see David sneak peeks at the gold records set in alcoves about the room. The smells of leather and wood polish lent an odd air of domesticity to their surroundings.

Santiago stood as they entered, dressed in black slacks and a crisp white shirt, just as he'd been the first time Colby saw him. A big grin creased his blunt features. "Hey, Granger, to what do I owe this--" His voice trailed off as he took in the appearance of the two men--Colby's ill-fitting uniform, David's scratched and scabbed face. His eyebrows went up and his grin changed to a calculating smile. He waved a hand peremptorily, and the flunky who had ushered them in gave his boss one uncertain look before backing out of the office and closing the door behind him. "You need my help," Santiago said. Colby wished he didn't sound so smug.

"Yeah." Colby hooked the pair of sunglasses he'd been fiddling with over his collar and tried to decide what to do with his hands. He wasn't sure whether to extend his right in an offer to shake or shove them both in his back pockets. Did this uniform even have back pockets? "Yeah, we do."

Santiago nodded once, then circled his desk with hand outstretched, solving Colby's dilemma for him. He still moved easily for a big man, as easily as Colby or David themselves. He clasped Colby's hand in his. "Anything, man, anything. You gave me back my boy, my Joey. Nothing I do can ever repay that."

"Wait until you hear the list," David said dryly.

Santiago turned to him, one eyebrow raised. "This guy with you, Granger?"

Colby stiffened at Santiago's tone of voice, while next to him, David smiled a dangerous little smile. Santiago locked eyes with David, and Colby got a sudden urge to smack both of them upside the head. "Yeah," said Colby, "he's with me. There a problem?"

"I seem to remember making that offer only to you."

Colby stepped back, one hand on David's arm. Damn, David was right, they needed the help Santiago could give, but they did not need this crap. "Come on, David. Let's get out of here. The man's word is obviously no good."

Both Santiago and David looked at him in surprise. David shrugged and turned to go, but Santiago, face darkening, grabbed his shoulder and David tensed under his hands, fists clenching. "Just a damned minute. Nobody comes into my house and tells me my word is not good. Not even you, Granger. I'm a generous man, but I have to be careful. You vouch for this guy?"

Colby stepped in, pushing Santiago back one step and away from David. "First of all, this guy's got a name, and it's David Sinclair. Second, he pretty much put his ass in a sling just to get me here. And third, maybe I did the flashy shit for Joey, but I work as part of a team. If it weren't for David neither Joey nor I would have come back alive. Comprende?"

Both of Santiago's eyebrows went up at that. He looked David over again and nodded grudgingly, but the big agent paid no attention. He was still staring at Colby, an odd look on his face.

"Okay, then," said Santiago, and held out a hand to David. "Welcome to my home, man. Whatever I can do for you." David started, and with one last look at Colby took the record mogul's hand, wincing a little as he shook. "Now I suppose you want me to send what'sername, Agent Reeves, some flowers."

"That might not be a bad idea," said Colby, and David smiled.

"Sit, sit," said Santiago, waving them to a pair of overstuffed leather chairs in front of his desk. "Something to drink? Too early for tequila, too much air-conditioning for beer..."

"Iced tea?" David asked as he sank into the chair. Colby followed his lead with a weary sigh. "I've got more driving to do."

Santiago gave him a lopsided smile. "Iced tea it is." He thumbed the intercom and leaned forward to issue a low-voiced order, then sat back and laced his fingers together on his desk. "So--don't tell me Dudley Do-Right's done wrong."

"All right," said Colby. "I won't."

David snickered.

"Aw, man," said Santiago. He leaned forward. "You show up looking like you're batting for a different team, and your buddy--" Colby raised his eyebrows. "--David here looks like he took a header through a window. You can't leave me hanging."

Colby shook his head. "Man, I wish I could tell you what's going on, but I can't." It would be easy for Colby to hide from Santiago behind the magic words "national security," but he couldn't hide from himself. He didn't want Che Lobo to think he was a spy. And he couldn't tell the whole truth, not with David here. Not yet. He shrugged. "I'm in trouble. That's what I can tell you."

"Somebody wants him dead," said David softly. Colby shot him an annoyed look and David stared back, unrepentant. "I don't think that's classified, Colby."

"Do you know who?" Santiago's voice quickened. Colby got the distinct impression that the man may have cleaned up his act for the sake of his son, but there were parts of his old life that he actually missed.

David shook his head. "No, we don't. I don't," he corrected himself. He jerked his head at Colby. "He might. He hasn't told me anything, either."

"So," said Santiago, a small grin curling his lips. "You ain't just Agent Dudley Do-Right. You're Secret Agent Dudley Do-Right."

"Look, I don't know either," Colby burst out. "I just know somebody wants me dead and they're willing to go to pretty extreme lengths to make it happen."

God, Don. He hadn't even thought about Don. He shared a glance with David.

"An untraceable cell phone," his partner murmured, and he nodded.

"What's that?"

"Just adding stuff to the list."

A knock on the door interrupted them, and at Santiago's answering shout the flunky brought in a tray with three glasses, a sugar bowl, and a small plate of lemon slices. The flunky, tall, wiry, and with a narrow, pock-marked face, looked them over as he served them, and carefully did not turn his back as he set the tray down on a small side table, and Colby had to fight not to laugh at the incongruity of the picture.

"I don't recognize your boy," Colby said, as Flunky saw himself out.

"I cleaned house a bit after--after Joey got home," Santiago said. Colby and David both nodded. The kidnapping of Santiago's son had been at least partially an inside job.

"How is he?" asked Colby, his voice softening.

"Joey? He's great." Santiago smiled broadly and leaned back. Like that, with his whole face radiating pride and love, the ex-gangbanger, extortionist, thief, mugger, and god alone knew what else looked like a good man. Hey, thought Colby, it could happen. He smiled back.

"How's the paper route?" David finished doctoring his tea with lump after lump of sugar and took a cautious sip.

"Paper route?" Santiago shook his head. "That's over, man. Too dangerous. He can go to school, man, but no paper routes." Santiago fell silent. Hell of a way to live, Colby thought again. Then Santiago brightened. "No, Joey's got himself a sweet little eBay store. Trading cards. He's gonna buy me out by the time he's twenty, you wait and see." He looked at Colby, and his smile softened. "He'll be so excited to see you, man."

"No." Colby jerked forward in the chair and swore as ice tea sloshed over his hand. "We need to be out of here before he gets back." Colby fought to keep his gaze steady as Santiago looked him over. "We can't get Joey involved in this, you know we can't." I can't let him see me. You're not the only one who wants to be Superman.

Santiago finally nodded. "Yeah. You're such a badass, I gotta get you out of my house. No offense."

"None taken," said Colby.

"So, drink up, and let's talk about that list."

2.718281828459 2.718281828459 2.718281828459 2.718281828459

Iago, ever conscious of Raymond's hand wrapped around his upper arm, kept his gaze forward as he allowed himself to be steered through the hospital halls. Men and women bustled past, brandishing clipboards, armored in stethoscopes. He caught only the merest glimpses, and not because Raymond was ruthless in his control; no, Iago could scarcely bear to look. The sight burned.

White lab coats blazed like Arctic sun on snow, and even the colors of the pale green or powder blue lab coats some doctors wore seemed supersaturated. They flapped open to reveal dark suits like masses of shadow. The nurses--he winced--the nurses wore Saturday-morning cartoon scrubs made from day-glo fabric that made his teeth ache. Rubber soles squeaked on tile, gurney and cart wheels rattled, the sting of antiseptic tore at his throat.

Iago had a vision of himself passing through these corridors as insubstantial as fog, as memories. He'd had privileges at several area hospitals--no, thought Iago, Lawrence Dryden had had privileges at several area hospitals, though not this particular institution. Not enough self-destructive starlets among his clientele, he thought, and almost smiled. Too bad. So many things might have been different.

But why waste regrets for the past life of another man? Someone who was becoming more and more of a stranger to him with each passing day? Someone whose grand plans had come to disaster, while Iago still had a part to play. And not the part that others had written for him, either.

Agent Raymond certainly wasn't doing what he'd planned. He'd planned to direct his men in a concerted effort to smear Agent Eppes, leaving behind the memory of a man who had cracked and killed. Instead, Iago had watched as Raymond answered his cell phone, his face first going blank, then white, as white as the bloodless fingers clutching the phone to his ear. Afterwards he'd shouted orders, new orders, and his men had jumped to their new mission: a cleanup, then a hunt. Eppes had broken his conditioning, and the target had gotten away.

After the first frenzy of activity, Raymond's men had climbed into their rented trucks full of equipment and driven off. Raymond had waited with Iago, sometimes pacing, sometimes turning a cold, speculative eye on his charge--first prisoner, then co-conspirator, and now--

Time to improvise. "I never promised this would work."

"But he's still alive," Raymond had snarled once.

Iago had begun to understand what Raymond was waiting for, and to hope for a part in what was to come.

Raymond had gotten his second phone call, and Iago's instructions afterward were intriguing, to say the least. He'd typed up a very short list of drugs and dosages--they'd stuck to just two: an experimental NMDA receptor antagonist and Iago's beloved dextroamphetamines. Iago was given to understand that the experimental drug was so hush-hush he could not be told its name; he privately thought it was so new no one had bothered to name it yet. No matter; it had controlled Eppes wonderfully and apparently the resulting hallucinations as Eppes had come out of it while under a hood must have been quite--something. He'd forwarded on the relevant information Raymond had given him.

As for the amphetamine dosages--they'd spiked Eppes' gum. He'd taken his best guess.

And then they'd come here.

Iago allowed himself a smile, glad that Raymond was behind him and could not see his face. Raymond thought they were here for some sort of retrieval, that he could just dump Eppes onto a gurney and roll him out of the hospital and into limbo. And that Iago would help him.

He fought the urge to shove his hand in his pocket, rub his thumb across the smooth plastic of the flash drive.

Agent Raymond was working off the wrong script.

"Where's that treatment center?"

Iago started, then stifled a chuckle. Raymond was coaching him on his lines. "Bethesda."

"Why is it so important?"

"He's at risk for a psychotic break if he doesn't receive proper support for his withdrawal--but really," Iago said, and he couldn't keep the smirk from his voice. "Any half-way decent doctor is going to take one look at the formula and recognize it as hopped-up ketamine."

Raymond's hand tightened around his upper arm and Iago sucked in a quick breath. He could feel bones grind together. "That's why you have to be convincing," said Raymond. He shoved hard and Iago stumbled. He heard a few disapproving whispers and saw a security guard take a step toward them, but Raymond must have flashed his badge because the man subsided, still glowering.

Not too many days before Iago would have found the crowd in the elevator to be intolerable, but now they were just people; a custodian, two interns, various friends and family members bearing bouquets and cowed expressions. And best of all, Raymond remained silent. As they got off on the fifth floor, the agent pulled in a deep breath and moved up next to Iago, shifting his grip from arm to shoulder and his expression from anger to studious concern.

Iago wondered if any of the people they were about to face would buy Raymond's act.

The automatic doors swung open at their approach. Iago took a deep breath as he saw a knot of four people gathered where the hall opened out into the waiting room. Only one looked familiar--the tall, slender woman with long, honey-blonde hair. He didn't need the sight of her shoulder holster to recognize Agent Reeves.

She stood between two men: one older, grizzled and slump-shouldered, his face a mask of bewilderment and anguish; one young, with dark curly hair and a tense, angry mouth. Iago recognized them from their file photos as Alan Eppes and Professor Charles Eppes. Another man, smaller and with wavy brown hair and a soft, expressive face, flanked the father on the other side. He and Reeves kept close to the older man, their hands on his back, trying to comfort him. That left the brother to look up and lock eyes with Iago, who swallowed and faltered.

"Agent Reeves," said Raymond. His hand tightened on Iago's shoulder. Reeves looked up, her eyes narrowing, as the brother broke away and stalked toward them.

"Dryden," he rasped, and Iago cringed to hear the name that had been taken from him. But where a month ago the name had brought pain, now he felt--nothing. Raymond moved forward to intercept Professor Eppes while Reeves left the elder Eppes' side in pursuit of the mathematician.

"Charlie," she said, a warning note in her voice.

Eppes stopped, looked down at his clenched fists. He laughed harshly. "Don't worry," he said, eyes never leaving Iago's. "I'm not going to touch him. He has work to do."

Iago nodded.

"What about that one?"

The father had roused himself from his misery to stride forward, suddenly sharp eyes fastening on Raymond. The man couldn't be briefed completely about what had happened to his son, both Reeves and the professor would know that, but neither was he stupid. He could obviously tell from the demeanor of both his younger son and Reeves that Iago and Raymond were the enemy. He waded forward, grizzled but still strong and bigger than either of his boys, both fists clenched just like the professor's, and he did not seem inclined to stop. "Are you the man who taught my son to fear me?"

Raymond stepped back as Reeves grabbed the older man. "Alan, as much as I'd like to let you punch this jerk in the nose, you can't help Don if you've been arrested for assaulting a federal officer."

Alan Eppes stopped. Her hand on his heaving chest seemed an insubstantial barrier, but it held. Until the professor said, "You're Agent Raymond, aren't you," and the father took one look at the loathing on his son's face and pushed forward again.

"Charlie, you're not helping," said Reeves, who shoved herself between Raymond and Alan Eppes as Professor Eppes finally came to her aid. "Larry," she called, "get Alan out of here."

Iago smiled as Raymond backed up. "Now I know where he gets it," Raymond muttered. The fourth man in the group, the one Reeves had just addressed as "Larry," scurried forward and tugged the father around with a surprisingly firm hand.

"Alan," he said, drawing the older man's attention with a forefinger waggling under his nose. "Alan, apparently these men believe ideals are no longer necessary for the guidance of our country. Do you intend to indicate your agreement by resorting to violence?"

Iago started. You tell me what's the difference between them and you, Eppes had said.

Alan Eppes finally let his shoulders slump and covered his face with his hands. "Dad," said the professor gently, "why don't you go with Larry. Megan and I will take care of things with these two. I'll call you as soon as I find out anything, okay?"

"Don't tell me," the father muttered. "National security, right?"

The son remained silent.

"I tell you, Charlie, we are not secure." He straightened, pulling in a deep breath. He turned to Dryden. "I have to know before I go. Can you help my son?"

Iago nodded, stirred to respect. His father had been long gone by the time Porter got into trouble, across the country with new wife number three, two toddlers, and an abiding belief that grown sons were grown first and sons second--if at all. No matter what Agent Eppes' folder had said existed between them, Alan Eppes was here for his child. "Yes, sir," he said quietly. "I won't lie to you. Your son has a long road ahead of him. But there's something I can do to set him on the right path. After that, it's in your hands."

Eppes nodded. "That's fair." He met Iago's eyes again. "Thank you. Now go do your job." He jerked his head toward the hallway, where Iago could see a heavyset Asian woman standing with her arms crossed, watching them with a raised eyebrow. Obviously another FBI agent, on guard duty. I hope you have more where she came from, Iago thought. You might need them.

Under cover of Larry leading Alan past them, Raymond jerked on Iago's arm. "What was that about?" he muttered, but Iago pulled smoothly away.

"Where is your brother's attending?" he asked the professor, who pulled his attention back from his vanishing father.

"Uh--Dr. Kim forwarded the email you sent to a Dr. Harmon, a psychopharmacologist at Thalians, and followed it to consult with him." The professor studied Iago, brown eyes wider, suddenly looking very young. Iago knew his offer of aid had shaken the man. The professor had probably been functioning under the assumption that he was his brother's sole shield against a very hostile world, and the slightest chance to unburden himself, the tiniest corner of shield to hand off to someone else, could make him crumble.

Don't trust me so much just yet. "Have Dr. Kim paged." He brushed past Eppes and Agent Reeves and strode toward the hall. He could feel Raymond's eyes as he walked. "Meanwhile, I need to see him. Where is he?"

"Don't we have something to discuss with Professor Eppes and Agent Reeves first?" Raymond's voice was sharp and threatening, and in spite of himself Iago shuddered.

"I presume you'll want him quiet?" Iago turned around, glad to see both Eppes and Reeves looking from Raymond to him and back, Eppes with an almost desperate expression, while Reeves' face had gone cold and hard.

"Yes," snapped Raymond. "Certainly I want him quiet."

"Then let me go see him. And I need to see him alone." Iago turned back to find the Asian woman standing directly in front of him, right hand methodically stroking the lapel of her suit. He started. Damn, but he wasn't used to being outside anymore. Who would have thought that he'd look back at that horrific warehouse he'd lived in for the last two weeks as a safe haven? Pull it together, he thought. This is new, but you still have a script. He looked back at Reeves, who exchanged a glance with Eppes.

"Agent Hsu, please escort Dr. Dryden to Agent Eppes' room."

Hsu gave Iago one last look before she stepped back and nodded. "Follow me."

Iago followed the agent, letting Raymond's voice fade behind him. He thought he heard Eppes' voice rise in protest, but when he caught sight of the second guard, a wiry black man with a deeply-lined face, everything else faded around him. He was dimly aware of the suspicious looks from the nurses, the wary orderlies pushing their carts on the far side of the corridor, but only as confirmation of what--who lay behind that door.

"Hey, Wolcott. Visitor for Agent Eppes," said the woman. Hsu.

"You want me to go in with him, or do you want to take it?"

Hsu looked over her shoulder at Iago, who did not need to be a psychiatrist to read the wealth of distrust in her gaze. "Reeves says alone."

Wolcott's eyebrows traveled upward, rearranging the lines on his face. "No way."

"I need his total focus. It will take five minutes at the most. Time me."

Wolcott pushed himself away from the door. "Arms out at your sides."

God damn it. "I don't know how long Raymond will wait--"

"Arms out at your sides, or he won't have to wait at all."

Iago closed his eyes and lifted his arms, the fear he thought he'd left behind beginning to squeeze his chest, his throat as he felt unfamiliar hands touch him. Agent Eppes, he suddenly thought, I'm so sorry.

"What's this?" muttered Wolcott as he dipped a hand in Iago's pocket. Iago forced himself not to pull away. "It'd better not be a syringe."

"It's a flash drive," Iago choked out. "Information for Dr. Kim. That's all."

"Well," said Wolcott, dangling the flash drive from its lanyard, "how about I deliver it for you?"

"And leave your post?" snapped Iago. He swallowed, eyes following the flash drive as it swung slowly back and forth. "Please. I'm here to help."

"Reeves said it was okay," said Hsu.

Wolcott shrugged. He dropped the drive, and Iago snatched it out of the air and shoved it back into his pocket. Wolcott stepped away from the door. "Five minutes."

"Thank you." Iago took a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heart, then pushed through the door.

The room was more brightly lit than he'd expected, since he was sure they'd want the agent to try to sleep, but then he remembered: Eppes would not do well with darkness right now. The only sounds were the sterile beeps of monitors and Eppes' harsh breathing.

Iago rolled his shoulders back and slowly approached the agent. Now that he was away from the situations he could not control, the people he did not know, he felt himself relax. He knew how to deal with the man on the bed. He ticked off indicators as he approached: limb holders, mitts. Probably a locking belt, but it wasn't visible under the sheet. An IV with, he thought, little more than saline, until Dr. Kim and her psychopharmacologist deciphered his email. And until they got this, he thought, fishing the flash drive out of his pocket once again. Though a lot more people than just Eppes' doctors would be interested in the information on this drive.

He unthreaded the lanyard and stepped up to the agent's side. Even as Iago reached for one padded cuff-clad wrist, he glanced at Eppes' face. The agent was white, masked in sweat, teeth clenched and eyes tightly shut. He smelled sour, and his gown was already soaked through. The wrist under Iago's hand was rigid. Iago slipped the flash drive inside the cuff and shoved it around until the lump was hidden by straps.

Satisfied, he stepped back and looked up into blank brown eyes. They widened as Eppes recognized him. The agent's mouth opened to scream, and Iago lunged forward, planting one hand on his chest, the other over his mouth. Iago shoved his face down next to Eppes' ear, ignoring the wild, white-rimmed eyes, the racing heart under his palm.

"The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief," he whispered, and waited. Eppes tried to tear himself away, and Iago pulled back until he could see into the man's eyes. "The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief."

Eppes froze, then his eyes rolled back and he sagged against the pillow.

Iago stepped back and wiped his shaking hands on his jacket. There was more Eppes should hear, but he was running out of time--

There. Iago scooped up a glass from the bed tray, but stopped with it poised to pour. No. Bad idea. That would probably cause a flashback. He slipped a hand under Eppes' head and brought the glass to the man's cracked lips.

Eppes sputtered, but swallowed once, then again, and opened his eyes. Iago set the glass down and leaned over Eppes, both hands steadying the man's face. The sheer terror was gone, replaced by confusion.

"Agent Eppes, I don't have much time," Iago said. "But you need to know that your mission was successful. You met your objectives. Do you understand?"

Eppes' brow furrowed, and he glanced past Iago at the room, then down at himself, obviously contrasting the fact that he was still alive with Iago's statement.

"Dammit. Don't fight me on this one. Objectives change. Your mission was successful."

There was a rap on the door, and Iago straightened. Eppes blinked at him, but made no sound. "You are safe. Your family is safe. You will never see me again." He held Eppes' gaze, and the agent's eyes slowly slid closed. Iago backed toward the door, fumbling for the knob. Wolcott opened the door and peered past him.

"Go check," Iago said simply, not bothering to wait. He headed for the waiting room, feeling numb. Hsu, obviously torn between staying to check on Eppes and sticking with Iago, walked backward beside him down the hall.

Iago had just registered the tiny, broad-faced Asian woman in a white lab coat--Dr. Kim, he guessed--who had joined the group when Wolcott called after them. "He's resting better."

"Cool," Hsu responded, earning a "sssh" from a passing nurse. The group in the waiting room was startled out of what was obviously an argument, until Raymond followed up with, "You see. We know how to take care of him. You don't. And I'm afraid some of the treatments are classified."

"Like hell we don't," said Dr. Kim. "And I would prefer to evaluate his condition myself, instead of depending on the medical expertise of an FBI agent."

"Be my guest," said Raymond. He swept his arm toward the hall, and Iago had to dodge the furious doctor as she stormed down the hall.

Raymond grinned at him as he rejoined the group. "So, is the agent ready to transport? The sooner we get him out of here, the sooner he can start to get better."

Iago steeled himself. Act Three. "No," he said. Ignoring Raymond's incredulous look, he turned to the younger Eppes. "You realize that if we leave with your brother you'll never see him again." The little mathematician's eyes went wide.

"Dryden."

Iago glanced at the CIA agent. Raymond hadn't seemed to realize that his old name no longer hurt. "Agent Reeves," Iago said, "I would like to be placed in protective custody."

"You god-damned--" That was Raymond.

The howl of rage was from Eppes.

He launched himself at Raymond, fist cocked for a wild punch. Raymond grabbed it easily and twisted. Eppes yelped. "What is it with your family?"

"Let go of him," snarled Reeves. She reached for the professor, and as her arms stretch forward, her holster swung into view, and Iago watched, entranced, as the script rewrote itself again. One hand on her shoulder, one hand on the gun, one smooth pull, swing up and--

Fire.

Raymond's head snapped back and he crashed down onto a coffee table, sending glossy magazines slithering out from under him, sliding to the floor as he lay very still. The crack of the shot, loud in the small space of the waiting room, was followed by Eppes' cry as Reeves yanked him to the side with a shout of her own. "Jesus! Is this Get Your Gun Stolen at Work Day?" Iago ignored them; he stared at Raymond's prone figure, thinking, This ending is so much better. Then, I thought there'd be more blood. And less smell.

"Drop the weapon," barked Hsu from behind him.

"No!" Eppes pulled away from Reeves and scrambled around and past Iago.

"Charlie!"

"Professor Eppes, get out of the way."

"You can't hurt him! He has to help Don!"

You know how this ends.

Iago raised the gun to his temple.

Eppes must have seen something in Hsu's face and turned around, because he gasped and Iago sensed him slowly edging his way back into Iago's line of sight. Iago countered until he had his back to the wall and could see all of them--all their white, strained faces. He had to explain.

"Wolcott, get back to Eppes' room," Reeves snapped, and one of the faces disappeared.

"No," said Eppes. "You have to help Don."

Iago sighed. "I'm sorry, Professor Eppes. What's done is done, and I've helped him as much as I can. Read the literature. He needs you; he needs your father. Though you might tell Mr. Eppes to tone down the authoritarian act--your brother has issues."

Eppes winced.

"He needs time. He needs his old reality back. He needs to not be tortured anymore."

The little professor closed his eyes. Iago could see tears trembling on the lashes.

"But most of all, you need to make sure he knows that he was strong enough. He won't believe you, but he was." Eppes blinked at him. "It wasn't my idea for him to break his conditioning. I wanted dead bodies for them to try to explain away, but this is much better. Your brother can't be explained away, as long as you keep him safe. And neither can your missing target." He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. The gun was getting surprisingly heavy, surprisingly quickly. "I'll just have to get the dead bodies elsewhere."

Eppes glanced behind at Raymond, while Reeves eased forward a step. "Who would have to explain them away?" she asked. "Who are we talking about here?"

"I've left you all the information I have. But Brutus has to end here."

"You don't have to end with it," Reeves said quietly. She held out her hand. "Give me the gun."

Iago smiled, a little sadly. He thought about what he'd realized in Agent Eppes' room. The only human he felt safe with was a man he'd already tortured. "I've discovered that your brother isn't the only one who's been conditioned. And I don't think I'm strong enough to break mine."

"Please--Dr. Dryden--"

"He's dead too," Iago said, and pulled the trigger.


End file.
